The Positive Warrior

Break For Now

2008-08-26T10:48:00.002-04:00

I am taking a break in playing my warrior which explains why I haven't been posting. AC has stopped raiding as you guys are all aware now and without raiding I just see no point of playing WOW. I don't know at this point if I will come back to play my warrior when Wrath hits.

In the meantime, I have been raiding casually with my Shadow Priest on a different guild and it has been so much fun. It is so different from tanking.

I am also looking forward in trying Warhammer Online. So I might just take a break from WOW itself and go play Warhammer.

Wednesday BT Night

2008-07-25T09:46:00.002-04:00

After last week's Black Temple visit, AC was feeling good and rolling. Wednesday night was no different. Nanjen'tus went down in 1 shot. Everything went smoothly and everybody was working together. Spines was being taken care of and people were communicating. I felt that we were at our best that night.

Since we had time, we went ahead and took several serious tries against Supremus. We did very well and got him down to 14% at one point. His end is very near. I think I am going to go as full protection on our next BT run. The nature of the fight calls for movements and it is possible that the MT will go down. I need to be ready to pick him up in case that happens.

4/5 Mt Hyajl

2008-07-21T23:34:00.004-04:00

Az went down in 1 shot. I won the t6 token.

Edit: 4/5 Mt Hyjal. It was late and I was just so happy I didn't even notice it is 4/5 and not 5/6.

AC = Black Temple Raiding Guild

2008-07-16T23:14:00.008-04:00

AC went back to Black Temple tonight and killed our 1st boss. High Warlord Nan'jentus dropped on our 4th try. He dropped the Eternium Shell Bracers which was picked up by our MT.

We then proceeded to Supremus' room to take a peek at him since we had time. We haven't really been there so it took a little time learning the trash pulls. It was a learning experience indeed and hopefully next time we should not have a problem.

Here is a screenshot of the big demon himself. We tried him 1 time just to see what the fight has to offer without any expectations. I was assigned to take hateful strikes, and boy they do hurt. It is doing at least 10k each time it hits me.

I went into tonight's raid with my same Mt Hyjal raid spec of 33/0/28. I wonder how much difference would the hateful strike be in my 8/5/48 protection spec.

I am considering going back to protection on our next BT visit. But since we really do not have 2 regular raiding rogue, my MS build helps on fights like Anetheron and Nan'jentus. DPS wise, I am helping and buffing the whole raid's physical damage up by 4%. I am doing around 200 more dps compared to when I dual wield devastate spam.

Another thing that I need to mention is that I really do not have any good weapons for dual wielding. I haven't been lucky. Do you believe that I haven't seen the Decapitator drop ever in my whole time in Kara? That is how unlucky I am when it comes to one hand dps weapon.

Hybrid?!

2008-07-07T17:33:00.003-04:00

I finally took the plunge and changed my spec. I tried and stayed 33/0/28 for our 2 nights in Mt Hyjal. I went deep in the arms tree to get MS and Blood Frenzy but also took some essential points in the protection tree.

This spec is purely for off-tanking and providing some dps and utility to the raid. With my gear level, tanking trash is not a problem. Looking at my tps, I am generating 600-700 which is low compared to my protection spec tps. But since we bring a bunch of tanks my target is usually the 2nd or 3rd amongs the kill order so threat wasn't be an issue. The priest who was healing me whispered me and told me that he didn't have any issues healing me on this spec which is always a good sign.

When it comes to dps, it really increased. I was able to do 600+ on the 1st boss and 800+ on the 2nd boss but I had WF so that might have bumped it up alittle bit.

All in all, I think the spec worked and I would be staying that way all of Mt Hyjal and possibly all of Black Temple too.

Kaz'rogal Down

2008-06-30T22:47:00.004-04:00

After last night's painful wipes on Anetheron, AC went in to one-shot him with almost everyone in the raid alive tonight. AC then proceeded to one-shot Kaz'rogal with no problems. It has been long overdue but tonight's raid was one good one after couple of weeks of wiping.

No notable drops as far as tanking gear goes but hopefully next week will be better! I am due for a big upgrade on my shield. I need it badly.

Mt. Hyjal

2008-06-17T09:58:00.004-04:00

I hate to say this but it just seems we are stuck with the 2nd boss of Mt. Hyjal Anetheron. We can blast through the 1st boss with no problem but the closest we have been with the 2nd boss was a 1% wipe on our 1st ever try. We haven't come close in any of our succeeding tries. People are either getting killed by infernal drops or the infernal tank is biting the dust.

It has been frustrating. We haven't really seen alot of progression in the past couple of weeks. BUT I know as a guild we can pull through. We have to continue to work together and since we have alot of new members, continue to gear them up and get them more experience.

AC Enters Black Temple

2008-06-09T23:20:00.005-04:00

It has been awhile since I last posted. Not much happening raid wise and toon wise. Basically after our guild's SSC clear we really haven't had anything new happening except for our 1st try on Black Temple last Sunday. We did one 3/4 TK and one 5/6 SSC clear to basically gear up more newer people before that.

Black Temple trash seems to be easy, well at least for the pulls leading to the 1st boss. We really didn't have problems with any of the trash which is really a good sign. Unfortunately, we will need more time on the boss. We did give it a good 8 tries which is really a learning experience to everyone. Hopefully, we can get to kill him on our next couple of tries.

We went after Mt Hyjal tonight and trash dropped the Pepe's Shroud of Pacification which I wasn't really after but it is a good upgrade nevertheless. I was trying to get enough badge to actually buy the Slikk's Cloak of Placation but at this point I do not know if I still want to spend badges on it.

Above is a screenshot of how the cloak looks equipped. I like the look of it. Looks really nice. I am thinking of using Pepe for trash and using Slikk's for tanking bosses. I can't decide yet.

I actually picked up the Girdle of the Fearless last week which I am liking very much. I am seeing a much needed increase in tps just based on looking at omen. I really haven't had the chance to tank any 5 man heroics or any 10 mans which I want to do at some point.

So at this point, I am unsure where to spend my badges. I was going for Slikk's but since Pepe dropped maybe I can use my badges on something else before it.

AC clears SSC

2008-05-18T22:56:00.004-04:00

Vashj went down. Took us several tries but as long as we go to phase 3 with everyone alive then it was easy. When everyone is clicking and working together raiding can be so much fun. I guess we will be working on TK next at least that way we can clear it and focus more on Mt Hyjal.

About Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve

2008-05-16T10:48:00.002-04:00

I have been using Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve alot lately. Since I don't have enough badge to get the brooch, I went for this in the meantime. Even if I know that the brooch is better since I am exalted with Aldor. The Pendant gives me 100 dodge rating.

Anyway, I used the pendant in our last TK run the whole time. As an off tank, I am usually tasked to tank the 2nd Crystalcore Devastator or stay back to take the charge from a Phoenix-Hawk Hatchling in Alar's room. The interesting thing about the pendant is that it procs even when your shooting your gun, isn't that great? Well, you have to be careful because it generates alot of threat, enough to pull everything around you.

Here is what happened:

MT shoots at a Phoenix-Hawk Hatchling to bring it down the ramp in Alar's room. I stay back a bit to take a charge. I used my gun just to make sure that the bird knows I am there in the back of the room and I want him to charge me. Pendant procs, I pull aggro.

2 Crystalcore Devastator on the way to Void Reaver's room. MT shoots at one Devastator, I go in and shoot mine to get initial aggro. Pendant procs, 2 devastator goes after me.

Just something interesting I would like to share.

5/6 SSC Clear ...

2008-05-14T23:44:00.003-04:00

Wednesday night and it is time again for another SSC run. It was more sloppy than our usual run but we still manage to clear 5 of 6 bosses in 1 night. I guess it is safe to say we have at least 5 bosses on farm. We just need to kill Vashj and honestly, I won't mind if we start skipping some of the bosses and go straight for her. We would be able to dedicate another day to a different instance (Mt. Hyjal).

Some thoughts about the SSC run ...

Overall 21.3 % damage mitigation and 59.2 % avoidance. It is down from last week but I went for high BV gear this week sacrificing some armor. Threat increased with Shield Slam averaging around 666 from 636 and going as high as 1838. Blocking as high as 1000 damage if auto blocker is up.

On Hydross: I am thinking of switching out some resist gear in favor of some threat gear. Our dps is scaling like crazy and I am having a hard time keeping up and generating threat.

Lurker: Trash leading to this fish is just getting repetitive. So much trash mob to clear. Fish itself is easy. I am trying to stay 2nd on the threat list to keep the fish off our melee guys but it is hard to do so when you are not main tanking.

Leo: I get to dps! I am slowly but surely building my dps set. I think I have a respectable dps armor but I lack the weapons. I am dual wielding my mallet and sun eater. I did around 500 dps with some ungemmed and some unenchanted gear with non-dps weapon so I think I did ok. I want to do more but I am afraid I won't be able to unless I get better main and off hand weapons.

FLK: I am on priest add duty. I hate the fact that she seems to be casting more ice block than usual. When I am ice blocked, I can't do anything so I am at her mercy. Nothing special. This fight is easy.

Tidewalker: I was on murloc duty covering north side. Our pally tank died. I tried my hardest gathering every murloc with the other tanks. We recover. I also tried keeping sunder armor and thunder clap on Tidewalker since we had a druid main tanking.

5% Vashj

2008-05-13T12:24:00.005-04:00

Our best try last night was getting Vashj down to 5%. We were very melee heavy last night and I can feel an impending Vashj kill on our next go around. We have been clearing 5/6 bosses in SSC in one night, usually one shotting everything and hopefully Wednesday will be the same. Unfortunately, I don't know if I will be available this Sunday, when they finally take her down.

Thank you for all the comments on my previous post. I have been busy with work and haven't had the chance to make frequent posts but hopefully I can in the next couple of days. I haven't really played my warrior except for guild raid days. I been spending my time gearing up my shadow priest and spending some time healing on my holy paladin which is keeping everything interesting. Good to take time off tanking and enjoying the other facets of the game that I haven't really enjoyed.

Attached below is a screenshot of a WWS report taken last Wednesday. It is an overall report of our 5 boss clear.

Now, I am not a WWS expert and I hate looking at numbers but the main stat I am looking at is the missed % and the mitigated %. Based on the numbers, I am avoiding 61.5% of physical hits and at the same time mitigating 22.3%. Are this good numbers based on my level of progression? I guess I am trying to establish a baseline and would love to see different wws reports of other protection warriors with my same level of progression granted that I am not MTing.

I am also trying to optimize and match gears to be a more efficient tank. I can get my block value as high as 750 and I want to see how this would affect my tanking. I will probably try it this Wednesday.

Wiped the Raid

2008-04-29T00:45:00.005-04:00

Well as you have guess from the title of my post, I wiped the raid again. Fall down from the top of the platform while tanking Alar. This fight has really been giving me problems, I think I am concentrating but for some reason I keep falling down.

Tanking has been tough for me the past couple of weeks. I think I have hit the wall and it is beginning to feel like a labor to me. I find it hard to even try heroic 5 mans, I just don't feel like tanking it even if I know I can benefit from the drops. Did Blizzard made the game so easy with other alternatives that running dungeons every single night is irrelevant now?

I mean, I would rather spend 2 hours doing mindless, less challenging dailies to get gold than go and spend 2 hours in heroic dungeon. I rather spend 2-4 hours farming Karazhan for easy badges than go do ZA. I think you get my drift here.

AC sets foot in Mt Hyjal - 1st boss down

2008-04-21T23:17:00.002-04:00

Rage Winterchill bite the dust as AC one shot him. The wave of mobs are the biggest challenge of the fight. I died either on the 8th or 9th wave when I got aggro from 4 Abominations. I tried to run back but got locked out as I was getting ready to head into the instance. I didn't get credit for the kill! Either way it was my fault, hopefully we get Mt. Hyjal on our regular raiding schedule and I would be able to get credit on the next kill.

This is raid getting ready to start the event.

We did kill Alar before we went to Mt Hyjal but it took us several tries. One of the try was caused by me falling down the platform accidentally. It sucks knowing you just wiped the raid. The margin of error with the Alar fight is huge so everyone has to be on top of their game. Tanks needs to be in the right position and should be able to taunt and pick up adds at the right time. Healers needs to be to heal everyone while running around while DPS needs to watch for aggro and watch for flame patches.

SSO Exalted

2008-04-21T09:23:00.002-04:00

I finally hit exalted last night with SSO. I have been very consistent in doing the dailies, it is insane the amount of gold you get from doing them every day. I picked up the SSO tabard which was really nice and at the same time Dawnforged Defender and Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve.

The Pendant is an interesting thing and since I am aligned with the Aldor, I get Light's Ward which is an increase in 100 dodge when it procs. Looking at WWS last night, it procced 36 times for me so it has a good proc rate. Vene over at www.tankingtips.com has a very interesting take at this pendant compared to the Brooch of Deftness. Don't just read the article itself but read all the comments too.

In other news - guild progression wise, we can clear 5 bosses in SSC in one night, which gave us one whole night dedicated to Vashj herself. It took us 9 tries last night and in my opinion a couple of more weeks away from downing her. Previously, we can't even get past phase 2 but on our last try last night we did get her down to phase 3 to around 38%.

Tonight will be Alar and Solarian and a planned visit to Mt Hyjal. I am pretty excited about going in Mt Hyjal for the 1st time but honestly I don't know if we will have enough time for it. I am estimating 2 hours on Alar and Solarian which leaves us with just one hour at least for My Hyjal. We will see.

3/4 TK - Ala'r Dead

2008-04-15T12:24:00.003-04:00

We went back last night to TK and got rid of Ala'r. The loot was forgettable but AC is finally 3/4 TK and that's what counts. This is a tank heavy fight wherein we used 4 tanks on top of the platform and 1 feral to pick up adds for phase 1. Phase 1 is easy. Melee kills adds, range on the boss. Watch for flame quill, jump down and go back up to position. Once phase 2 starts he will cast flame patches on the ground so everyone has to be aware and move out of it. Adjust your spell detail graphic to make sure you can see the flames on the ground. Since the ground is all glossy and shiny, without spell detail adjusted you might not see it and die from it. As a tank, you have to be ready to taunt Ala'r since he will immediately go for your top threat guy (usually a range dps).

I was sharing tanking duty on Ala'r on phase 2 since he puts a debuff on a tank called Melt Armor which means the other tank needs to taunt it off. Make sure your challenging shout ability is right on your toolbar just in case Ala'r resists your taunt. Worst comes to worst, you can stance dance and use mocking blow to get his attention. If everyone can stay alive, get out of flame patches, kill adds and tanks taunt Ala'r off each other then this is an easy fight.

Vashj is still giving us problems and I am not sure if we are even going to try Kael. I am hoping that we even try going into Mt Hyjal and take a peek soon.

2nd Look: Dawnforged Defender

2008-04-11T09:18:00.003-04:00

I was looking and browsing through the new faction's (SSO) item list and took another 2nd hard look at the shield Dawnforged Defender. It is actually not a bad shield to tanks who are still using either the Crest of the Sha'tar or the Shield of Impenetrable Darkness. I haven't had the chance to get the shield that drops off gruuls or the shield that drops off the dragonhawk boss.

It basically gives you more dodge and hit in exchange for defense and a little bit of stamina. Getting +hit and +dodge at this point wherein I have the +defense to spare seems like to be a good trade off.

5/6 SSC

2008-04-07T09:12:00.002-04:00

It has been awhile since the last time I posted. AC has found a way to at least kill 4 bosses in 1 night in SSC, leaving Tidewalker and Vashj herself on the 2nd night of raiding SSC. Our target is to be able to kill all 5 bosses in SSC in 1 night and leave Vashj on the 2nd night.

Tidewalker went down last night and he dropped the ring that I really wanted:
Ring of Sundered Souls. This has increased my dodge and stamina. With that ring on hand, I will be able to focus my points on getting the rest of the t5 pieces. I am setting my sight on the t5 gloves first.

Tonight will be our guild's first try on Alar. I watched the video and I love the fact that several tanks will be needed in this fight. 3 tanks up top and tanks down on the floor to kill adds. Not sure what our guild strat would be but at least I will be doing some tanking on the boss fight.

Too Many Things To Do - Too Little Time

2008-03-27T12:43:00.002-04:00

The release of patch 2.4 added a lot of new stuff for me to do. New instance which I have run once on normal. Several new dailies increased the # of dailies one can do to 25. With so many new things to do and with my limited online time I have to pick and choose which daily quest/instance is worth doing.

Below are some of my favorite stuff about the patch so far:

More choices of dailies
ZOMG Badge of Justice from 25 mans (AC went to SSC and killed 4 bosses = 8 badges)
10 gold per person per boss kill in SSC (not sure if its the same throughout all 25 mans / ZA)
Chance of getting Badge of Justice from doing the dailies!
PvP tokens turns in for honor!

Patch 2.4 really opened up alot of things for casual player. It made WoW more accessible and I easier in my opinion. You can actually get to see Vashj and open the bridge as soon as you clear through it. You don't have to kill all the bosses!

1% - Tidewalker ....

2008-03-16T23:58:00.005-04:00

Leo died on Wednesday which gave us a lot of time to work on Fanthom Lord and Tidewalker Sunday night. 2 shot Fanthom Lord with ease. The first try was a botch pull so technically we really had one try on Fanthom Lord.

He did dropped Frayed Tether of the Drowned. My dodge is going to take a real hit if I equip this item in favor of my Barbed Choker of Discipline. Seeing how low my dodge is going to get, this item might be a situational one based on the fights ...

Tidewalker was a different story .... BRK's screenshot kindda explained how it went down. Our best try ever on Tidewalker so far. We had our better geared druid take MT position since our warrior MT was really having issues with Tidewalker's high burst damage. Our Pally aoe tank went down when he was trying to make a transition at 25%. Me and the rest of the protection warriors tried our best at holding down all the murlocs but it was too much.

We can smell it and hopefully next week we should be able to take him down. He drops one of the better tanking ring that I desperately need to increase my dodge rating: Ring of Sundered Souls.

Solarian Down

2008-03-12T10:34:00.007-04:00

I said AC was rolling on my previous post, Monday was no different. We killed VR as usual and headed over to take out Solarian out of the way too. I love this fight, at least it gives me something interesting to do... tank! I am suppose to tank the priest adds the he summons. Granted that the priest doesn't really hit hard at all .... it is still something to do.

As we progress, I now have to start looking at gear again. I need to be able to figure out if the current gear I have is good enough and which gear will be the biggest upgrade. Do I save my points or bid them and blow them all up on a gear that would be a minimal upgrade?

Since we are downing Solarian, lets look at an item that he drops: Boots of the Resilient. I have Jungle Stompers currently equipped. I am not jumping up and down for the boots that Solarian drops. I don't like the stats at all and it seems like to be more of a pally boots than a warrior one. It will have tons of stamina and it will be more than my stompers. I don't know if its worth spending alot of points on.... It maybe something to get just for the stamina though

AC Rolling!

2008-03-11T09:28:00.004-04:00

AC picked up raiding last Sunday, as BRK have already reported we went in and killed Fanthom Lord. It took us several tries to get everything in order but as soon as his adds go down it is easy sauce.

I am glad I finally get to tank something in a boss fight. My main job in this fight is to tank the Priest add. She hits hard, averaging 2k per melee hit and some frost related attacks that hurts. One of the rouge was assigned to interrupt heals to make sure it doesn't go off. I have to make sure I keep my shield block to make it easier on my healer. The raid actually had to put 2 healers on me and the rogue to make sure they can keep us up.

The shaman add hits the hardest but like I said, as soon as he goes down we free up 2 more healers which make the fight easier. It took us 6 tries but we eventually got him down with minimal problems.

We headed up to Tidewalker's room but didn't have much time to get more tries at him. Hopefully Leo goes down as planned on Wed. which would give us alot of time to kill Fathom Lord and get more tries at Tidewalker on Sunday.

Leo Dies. I Sit Out.

2008-03-06T09:43:00.002-05:00

AC one shotted Hydross and Lurker last night and went ahead to kill Leo too. Hydross and Lurker are basically on farm right now, we just go in clear and kill without even thinking. Leo has been giving us alot of problems and I have decided to sit out and let Geldin in after Lurker. We bring 3 protection spec warriors and at the same time 1 prot pally to the raid. In most cases, we have enough dps to kill even with 4 protection spec tanks but Leo has been such a pain that I had enough of that fight and just want to see him go down.

The approach is basically simple, we do have enough people around who can do more dps than me. At this point in our progression, we need to stack more to the advantage of the raid so we can gear people up faster. I will have my turn and I don't have any problems sitting out. With more dps last night, AC killed Leo in around 8 minutes. That is 2 minutes ahead of the enrage timer and that basically gave dps alot of time to take him down methodically in the last 15%. AC was having problems always in the last 15% wherein he splits and the raid has to fight the demon and human form at the same time. Last night, that wasn't a problem.

By doing this, AC is setting its sight on Tidewalker this Sunday. I haven't done this fight and I am not sure how many tanks is needed but hopefully I get to do something.

This is my biggest problem in the game with the protection spec warriors right now. I don't care what you tell me, protection warriors cannot dps! To me, even with dps gear it is subpar. This is the time when I wish I was a pally tank or a druid tank. Druid tanks can switch to cat and do decent dps while pally tank can switch to healing and do decent healing. Why can't protection warriors have that same flexibility? Why?

Again, I am sure people will post and say that you can dps, spam devastate/heroic strike and put on your dps gear BUT to me it is unacceptable and its still feels subpar.

Arms/Fury + Prot Build

2008-03-04T15:25:00.003-05:00

I need to review some Arms/Fury + Prot Build. Is anyone running a similar build? I want to explore the possibilities .... Is anyone running 25 mans as an OT using a hybrid build? If you are one of them, post ur spec.

Leo

2008-03-03T10:07:00.003-05:00

AC is currently working on Leo. They have killed him once but I was out that night they killed him. He is being a pain and difficult. This is a frustrating fight for me. I am full protection and I am suppose to dps this fight since you really don't need a lot of tanks for this. I do measly dps and I really just plan to sit this out and let a dps spot in.

How many protection warriors does your guild/raid bring to this fight? Are you in the same boat as me? Do you find yourself frustrated that you really can't do that much dps on this fight?

Let me know your experience. Thank you.

T5 - Destroyer Shoulderguards

2008-02-22T12:01:00.004-05:00

BTW, I forgot to mention that I was able to grab the T5 warrior shoulder after VR went down last monday. I wasn't expecting to win but I spent all of my points off it anyway. It is a nice looking shoulder ..... My Block Value and Block % is getting higher than ever. I am blocking around 500 points and around 29%

Recruiting Healers

2008-02-21T13:08:00.003-05:00

Looks like we are recruiting again.....

Aetherial Circle (Drenden Alliance) is looking for a few healers for our 25-man raiding team.

We're a friendly bunch of casual raiders, 18+ and maturity is required (though we still manage to have gutter minded fun) ;-)

So on to the technical stuff:
We are 2/6 SSC and 1/4TK, Maggy down. We're currently working on Leo in SSC so applicants should have Tier 4 and Gruul-level gear and able to perform at that level.

Our 25-man raiding schedule is Sunday, Monday and Thursday at 8pm EST. We don’t expect people to make every single run, but missing a raid should be the exception rather than the rule.

Classes are we looking for specifically:
Holy Paladin
Resto Shammy
(We have a veritable forest so we're good on Trees ^.^)

If you are interested, please send us an email at recruitment@aetherialcircle.com

If you could please include thingies like:

- Your Armory link
- Your gear list (in case you logged out in like, farming gear)
- A paragraph about yourself, your raiding experience, and why you’re insane enough... er, I mean, wanting to join up ^.^

Oh and if you were curious, lewt rulz!
From the GM, Fiordhraoi
"We use a zero-sum DKP system called SWAPS. For more details on how this system works, check http://www.boomchucka.com:8080/Uplink/aboutswaps.jsp."

More person quips from the GM dude:

"This is a great group of people, and we've come to be close knit. I can honestly say that working with my guildmates has been one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. I don't think you could find a better, more friendly atmosphere in any guild, nor people who are more fun to be around. That's the real prize. Smile"

New Badge Loot!

2008-02-19T09:08:00.004-05:00

I went to Wowhead today to get more information about new items coming in from patch 2.4. I saw a new link called New Badge Loot. Based on the list the items can be purchased by turning in Badges of Justice but they can be purchased from a different person located on Isle of Quel'Danas. Took a closer look and got blown away from the # of badge required ..... everything is from 75 to 100 to 150. I guess I need to start collecting those badges to prepare for the upcoming patch. A full clear of Kara would net you around 22 badges so it doesn't seem that bad. From the list the following items interest me:

I will probably go for the chestplate first since thats the biggest upgrade unless I get something in between.

AC went to TK again and killed Void Reaver on our first try. Had a little bit of troubles with the trash pulls which made it a longer raid than anticipated. Hopefully we get to clear trash faster and it goes smoother on the next run which will give us time to try some other bosses.

Gear Updates

2008-02-18T09:23:00.006-05:00

I was able to get enough badges to buy the Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx this weekend. It is a very nice upgrade and it should improve my overall tps. I am not sure which item I am going for next but I really need to upgrade my chestpiece ... what are my choices?

I missed Wednesday's raid and Hydross didn't go down so last night we headed over to try him again. He dropped Scarab of Displacement which no one really wanted so I picked it up for cheap. I think this item has its uses. Forget about the use, the positive thing about this item is the increases defense rating by 42 line. Ironic thing about this is that it will be very useful on the Hydross fight itself when all the resist gear will drop your defense rating down.

Spyglass of the Hidden Fleet dropped too but I really didn't want to spend alot of dkp on this item. The other warrior wanted it so I let him worked for it a bit. The +40 stamina is good on this trinket. Since SSC will be a weekly run, I am hoping this thing drops again and I can get it for cheap =). I want to reserve my points on items that rarely drops and since TK is on schedule too, tier 5 shoulders shouldn't be too far off.

Void Reaver Down!

2008-02-11T22:38:00.001-05:00

It took us 2 hours to clear trash the 1st time we went to TK. 1 hour later we were staring at Void Reaver as we get ready to take a shot at him. 2 tries later even after losing 3 people to early aggro issues and letting him enrage at 2% Void Reaver went down.

The raid approaches Alar's room as we get ready to clear more trash

It speaks alot about our guild and I am proud to be part of Aetherial Circle. It is a testament to what AC is all about. The atmosphere is relaxed and wehave fun but when it comes down to the the goal, everyone contributes and do their part. 2 pauldrons of the defender dropped, unfortunately I didn't win any of the tokens. Hopefully we will see Void Reaver more often now that we have the fight under our belt.

AC downs Void Reaver in 2 tries

I went with my Unwavering Legguards on our first try and I noticed alot of miss and parry. I decided to switch to my Wrynn Dynasty Greaves with +hit gems. Since we are using 3 protection warrior tanks to bounce aggro from each other and since I am not MTing, my main job is to keep up with aggro generation with limited rage. This means I need to make every attack count and I really cannot afford to miss alot. I think it was a successful switch since I was able to keep my tps up and had to tank Void Reaver for a certain period of time.

New Blog Link

2008-02-11T10:11:00.000-05:00

I wanted to introduce a new link today. He plays a frost mage and occassionally raids with AC whenever he is not busy raiding and killing Illidan with his original guild in a different server. He is very very good at playing a mage. Go and check out his site @ Spicy Tunas.

WTB more raids!

2008-02-10T10:34:00.001-05:00

My schedule hasn't been that cooperative and I have missed alot of raids during the last 2 weeks. The last raid I was in was when we took down Mag for the 1st time. Here are some screenshots that I took during our mag kill:

This is AC preparing to kill Mag just outside of his room

This is AC flying above Honor Hold showing of the Mag kill

I also haven't posted a screenshot of my current stats after getting new gear. My block at this moment is around 28% and my dodge went down to 22% but at the same time I have 15k unbuff HP right now. I have to get into more raids to see the effect of this but so far so good. Here is a screenshot of my defensive stats:

Magtheridon Down!

2008-02-05T12:48:00.001-05:00

I am so late. We dropped him last week Wednesday after several times. The major adjustment that our raid made was to make the off tanks cube clickers which included me. We had more health than anybody and at the same time we do minimal dps. It really worked out well and we killed him on our 5th try.

As one of the protection spec warrior tank, my main job was to tank a channeler. I was assigned to tank the 5th one which is the toughest among the rest of the channelers (they grow stronger as other channelers get killed). You will want to make sure you take minimal damage as the rest of the raid is trying to kill the other channelers. You will want to focus on interrupting the shadow bolt volley everytime your target tries to cast it. Not only does it deal damage to you but it deals damage to everyone close to you. Huge amount of damage. So make sure it gets interrupted. Make sure to reserve last stand, shield wall and trinkets for use when the 4th channeler goes down.

We will try him again on Wednesday and hopefully it will only take a couple of tries this time.

Mag Problems

2008-01-28T10:20:00.001-05:00

AC went to take out Gruul's last Wednesday with no problem. Clearing High King and his council along the way. I think it is safe to say that Gruul's Lair is on farm status. Aldori Legacy Defender dropped for the first time ever.

I have no idea if I am going to see the shield again but MT has to have first shot at that shiny thing if we want to progress. At this point of my wow life, I rather progress than gear myself. I rather see we down new bosses every week than see me getting new gear. Besides, I can still upgrade myself on other items and my time will come.

BUT we can't seem to get Mag down. I think we have the killing of the channeler part down, but the cube clicking part is still an issue. Mag is on schedule again and this time we are going after him from the start. I think AC wants his blood real bad and I am pretty sure at some point we will have him.

Also, we can't seem to get the 25 man raiding momentum going. Last week we were able to raid on Sunday and got Hydross down but Monday's raid day was called for some reason I cannot remember. This time, Sunday's raid was called and we are looking to go into SSC tonight for the 1st time this week. I am hoping that we have more SSC and we get to go into it more consistently.

Unwavering Legguards - Finally Mine!

2008-01-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

I was able to get into a pretty stacked KZ group on Friday. We started at 8pm and finished around 1:30 AM but we cleared everything including optional bosses and left only Nightbane and Netherspite standing.

As soon as I logged Saturday noon time, I was able to get a heroic botanica group going (it was the heroic daily too) that gave me 7 more badges which would be enough to finally grab the Unwavering Legguards.

This item comes with 73 stamina. I decided to put 3 solid star of elune and a nethercleft armor kit (40 stamina) to bring the stamina from 73 to 149 total. Huge huge upgrade in terms of stamina bringing me to 15K hp unbuff. I am keeping my Wrynn Dynasty Greaves since it has more +dodge and at the same time gemmed with +hit for fights that I will need more avoidance and more hit.

The next item on the list is the Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx. I have 7 extra badges right now and this one will need 35. Just have to keep on trying to get some heroic groups at the same time maybe get into a KZ group this week.

My Nature Resist Gear

2008-01-23T19:28:00.000-05:00

Here is a complete list of my nature resist gear. I was fortunate enough to be able to craft the Wildguard set myself.

Everything here should give you a total of 300 nature resist un-buff and it should be enough to tank Hydross in his nature phase

Edit: I forgot about the Wildguard Leggings which came with 60 nature resist.

Quest for the Unwavering Legguards

2008-01-23T09:40:00.000-05:00

In my quest to get the Unwavering Legguards. I have started to work on getting heroic badges again. I have set a goal for myself to at least get into a heroic dungeon run at least 1 time everynight that no raid is scheduled.

Going to Kara would have been a nice way of getting the badges but its on farm status and Kara runs are always almost scheduled on Friday and Saturday nights. Since I spend a lot of time on WOW, I see to it that I stay away from the game on Friday and Saturday nights.

So far so good, I did ramparts on monday night and worked on underbog last night. Things have gotten alot easier. I guess my gear has really gotten better and at the same time most of the people I run with has gotten better gear too. Overall I spend more or less 2 hours on 1 heroic instance which is not bad. The rest of the night I spend pvping with my pally casually.

I have around 40 heroic badges so that means I still have a long way to go. AC is raiding tonight, Gruuls and Magtheridon is on schedule. As a guild, we really haven't tried Mag that much since we didn't have enough warlocks. Hopefully tonight, we get enough warlocks and enough people as a whole to be able to get some serious try on him.

More Guild Progression - Hydross Down!

2008-01-21T13:27:00.000-05:00

Another milestone was set yesterday as AC went to down Hydross. It took us several tries but in the end we got him down. We had to make some adjustments to the group makeup along the way. We brought 7 healers, 1 warlock and 2 mages to fight Lurker and that same group stayed to try Hydross.

But after several attempts with nothing to show for, it was decided that we didn't need that much healers since the MT who was tanking the frost phase and me tanking the nature phase wasn't really taking alot of damage especially on the early stages of the debuff (Hydross will stack increase frost or nature damage taken on tank that will go up to 250%). We transition as soon as 250% debuff is applied.

I have well over 375 nature resists with buffs (I have to get the exact amount) and around 17k hp buffed so at the end we brought in 2 more warlocks and 1 more mage. This increased our aoe damage and dps overall which made this fight easy. In another post, I will have to list down what my nature resist gear is.

It is very important for the tanks and off tanks to keep Hydross and the 4 adds together. You will want the AOE damage to kill the adds at the same time damage Hydross for efficiency. We used 1 pally tank, 1 warrior tank and 1 feral druid tank to try to manage the adds. Our pally tank is the main off tank for the adds. The feral and warrior off tank's job is to make sure that all adds stay on the center with Hydross and they go after adds that drift outsides of the AOE to try to bring them back.

Hydross is a such a fun fight and SSC overall has been one of the best raid instance I have been. I like it way more than Karazhan. I am actually looking forward to tonight's raid wherein we go for Tidewalker and another boss that I can't remember (our raid leader told us last night, I just can't remember the name).

Back!

2008-01-15T12:14:00.000-05:00

Blizzard finally restored all my stuff Monday just in time for AC's Gruul's/Doomwalker run. We cleared Gruul's Lair in 1 hour and proceeded to SMV for Doomwalker.

Here is the raid getting ready in front of Black Temple.

We got him down to 6% on our first try and finally killed him on our 2nd try with 26 people in the raid.

Account Suspended

2008-01-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

Last night when I was afk, I got disconnected from WOW. Tried logging back in to found out that someone changed my password. I said to myself "not again" .... So I went ahead and check my email, lo and behold a received an email that my password has been changed.

At this point I am confused, how can they get me again when I just reformatted my computer? So I tried logging in with the password they provided and found out that my account was suspended.

I am really confused .... No emails or whatsoever from blizzard and they suspend my account?! I know that my account is under investigation but should they inform me first before they suspend my account?

I talked to a GM and they informed me that I can continue playing. But why are they suspending my account without any notification which kindda pissed me off. So without anything else that I can do, I emailed account services and asked why my account was being suspended. I want to confirm that it is being suspended because its under investigation and they are reviewing my account for restoration (which I hope is being done).

I woked up this morning to find an email from Blizz's account services... here is part of the email

"This is a notification regarding the World of Warcraft account. Access to this account has been temporarily disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. Based on a review of the information presented, this World of Warcraft account has been given a final warning and a 72 hour account suspension, in addition to any previous warnings issued. Until the suspension has been lifted, the account will not be accessible. Please note that Blizzard Entertainment will be unable to provide further information regarding the specific time an account will become accessible again. "

Looks like a cookie cutter system generated email to me. I am kindda disappointed. I would hope by now someone from Blizz would give me better direction and better information. So right now I am in limbo, account is suspended with only this email to show. I have no idea what's going on and is only hoping they are suspending my account so that they can restore my stuff....

Hacked!

2008-01-11T09:21:00.000-05:00

I guess by this time, everyone knows I have been hacked. BRK and TJ both reported em ... I have always thought that I am careful with the security of my computer. At this point its too late. I have reformatted my computer and lost alot of stuff from my 2 level 70 toons.

It really sucks and I just have to wait till Blizzard investigate my account and hope for a restoration. I honestly don't know how long thats going to take. What sucks more is I lost my resist gear. My guild is looking to work on Hydross but with this setback they had to change direction and target something else. The hacker left my tank gear intact so I am good to go with normal tanking ....

It honestly turned me off wow for a bit. I love my toons much and to lose everything you have is not really a good thing. Hoping to get into more raiding to get back into things. Blizz told me to continue playing which puzzles the hell out of me on how they will restore my stuff. As I continue playing, I will gain more stuff and gold.... How will they restore stuff? mail them to me? or will it just magically appear in my bags? I have had this happen to me before so I really don't know.

A Shot @ Doomwalker

2008-01-08T10:11:00.000-05:00

AC cleared Gruul's lair last night - 1 shotting everything. With so much time left the raid decided to give a world boss a try. Doomwalker in SMV was up and everyone headed over quickly.

Since the raid decided to use 1 warrior tank, 1 pally tank and 1 druid tank for the fight... I volunteered to switch to my ret pally. I believed that my ret pally would be more useful since he can dish out more dps than my protection warrior.

MT starts the fight and when Doomwalker would use his charge ability, the pally tank would use his righteous defense and taunt Doomwalker back to position. This would continue until Doomwalker enrages at 20% wherein the Druid tank will take over. Since Doomwalker does all physical damage, a druid tank at this point with all the amor will be better. We got him down to 1% .... freaking 1% and wiped. We tried 2 more times but our first was our best try.

Since I was dpsing this fight, it was completely different for me. As a ret pally, I was keeping myself alive by healing myself which is very important for this fight if your dpsing. I noticed that some of my attacks were immune but I couldn't tell what it was. I am assuming it was my holy damage that he was immune to which would gimped me a little bit. With all the moving around, I can say that this is not a friendly fight for me as ret.

In any case, as a guild we have taken another step. We were close and we know we can bring him down with 25 people. I am pretty sure the officers will start scheduling doomwalker on our raiding schedule.

Feels Good!

2008-01-03T10:23:00.000-05:00

It really feels good to be back at raiding again. AC went into SSC and killed Lurker. We didn't once shot him but with new people around, couple of wipes were expected. I think we did kill him on our 4th try. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to try Hydross.

While waiting for the raid outside of SSC, several guild's warrior was waiting outside too and I have a habit at inspecting other peoples gear to see what they are wearing. One thing caught my eye - one warrior had Unwavering Legguards equipped! I had to take a 2nd look ....this item has tons of heath! With me trying to gear my pally, I think I might have overlooked my warrior a bit and overlooked upgrades that I can still get. Vene from Tanking Tips (another good tanking blog) has posted a very good analysis of gear you can get from heroic badge turn ins which was just perfect for my situation. With all the new gear, it is sometimes confusing and it is not uncommon to overlook items that are good especially when you already have some epic items. I used 60 of my badges to pick up Iron-tusk Girdle and have 33 left .... I really don't feel like doing heroics and I might be headed back to Kara for easy badges. Our guild usually do a Moroes - Prince run in one night which would give you 13 badges which is way more than doing 1 heroic.

EOTSing

2008-01-01T18:41:00.000-05:00

So I spent most of my day on my ret pally doing EOTS trying to complete the daily pvp quest. All day without a win! Words are not enough to describe how horrible alliance is with BGs.

I have noticed one thing, most of the alliance group doing EOTS have this grand idea of taking 3 bases and holding them. Honestly, I think this is overly ambitious ... sometimes we can't even hold one base. Going for 3 bases without establishing control on the middle and at the same time trying to defend bases will just thin out any resistance.

I think the best way for alliance to win is to take 2 bases and defend while controlling the middle and capping the flag. And when everything is stable, send some people to take a 3rd base.

I just wanted to vent, coz I am tired of losing! Why can't alliance get it together?

Happy New Year!

2007-12-31T11:21:00.000-05:00

It has been a blast writing this blog and I am looking forward to more new and exciting stuff this coming year!

Guild took a break from raiding during the holidays and that gave me time to play some other games. I dabbled in a little bit of Tabula Rasa which is completely different from WOW. I liked it and will continue to spend some time playing it on off nights. Nothing beats blasting aliens left and right!

BUT on to the New Year and AC's raiding schedule has been put up. We start off the new year with a visit to SSC. This is our guild's main focus right now and I hope we get more than 1 day of SSC raiding in a week. Here is what my raiding schedule looks like:

Wednesday - SSC (Lurker and Hydross)

Sunday - TK (Void Reaver)

Monday - Gruuls (High King and Gruul himself)

I am glad raiding is back!

Break From Raiding

2007-12-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

Our guild is technically taking a break from raiding during the holidays. So no 25 mans for me till next year. I am sure you guys all know by now that we are recruiting ... BRK and Doom have all posted the information. In my opinion what we really need are priests! Holy Priests to be exact. We really have only 1 holy raiding priest with us. Based on the information, we are looking for t4 geared/kara/gruul geared people but I am sure if you are a priest with some kara/mooncloth gear you will be welcomed. (Again this is just my opinion, you will still have to go through the process and email to get accepted). We still run kara, but just dont expect this to be scheduled every week especially after the holidays when we start raiding 25 mans again. Kara is being scheduled just for fun and for some alt runs .... my pally has been taking advantage of it.

But last night I went to Kara as Brigin, we plowed through Moroes, Opera, Aran, Chess and Prince with no problem and this is without any priest in the group. No shackles or no fort buff the entire run. We had to use a frost mage to kite one of the adds of Moroes since we had only 1 hunter to trap and 1 pally to fear. We never really had any wipes except for 1 in Prince. Some crappy infernal dropped on the dps group and on the tank group. Still hate that when it happens.

Tonight will be kara again for my retribution pally. I lead the group last week on my pally and I am really looking forward to not leading tonight's run =). I want to sit back and enjoy dpsing for a change.

Email Question

2007-12-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

Here is another email question I received:

My character name is Akacia, she is on the Suramar realm. I am an avid reader of your blog and I have to say that your tips helped me go from a very incompetent tank to a competent tank that people enjoy having in groups.
My question is two part:

1.) I use Omen and am regularly around 400-500 TPS. What can I do to help generate more threat as some of the caster types and especially Shaman tend to generate 700-1200 TPS. Keep in mind I do mostly PuGs for exp and rep.

Shamans definitely generate so much threat, I play with one so I know how it feels. You will want to make sure you have a good threat generation cycle. Check my post of threat generation for more details. Also, you may want to adjust your talents around a bit. I see that you didn't take the following:

Focused Rage
Rank 3
Reduces the rage cost of your offensive abilities by 3.

With focused rage, you will have more rage to work on. You will be able to use your abilities more often to generate more threat. Alot of times, pugs dont wait or give you time to gain threat, without this talent you will have a hard time keeping up with them. This talent is a must and should be taken over improved disarm or improved revenge.

Cruelty
Rank 5
Requires Melee Weapon
Increases your chance to get a critical strike with melee weapons by 5%.

More crits means more damage. More damage means for crit. Again I would take this over improved disarm and improved revenge.

2.) When can I start doing heroics? I have 11490ish ;P HP and 511 def. hoping you can help
12k HP
12k Armor
At least 490 defense

If you are doing Kara, you should be ok tanking heroics. You might need to be CC heavy at first until you get better gear, coz you might only want to tank 1 mob at a time at this point. I say you are ready to tank heroics.

Email Question

2007-12-14T13:40:00.000-05:00

I have been a little late in answering emails. I know I slacked off a bit so I am doing a little bit of catching up. Here is an email I received from Kaylob

"Been reading your posts for a couple of months now and greatly appreciate what you are doing. Helps a lot of us noob tanks out there get a little more informed. I'm OT for my guild and we've been running Kara for a couple of months now. 9 of 12 events down. Need better gear and coordination for the rest of the group in order to start taking on Netherspite, Prince and Nightbane, but we do well overall when we have the proper group makeup. Now to my question. We recently got the Battlemaster enchant to drop in Kara. I had gotten the King's Defender the week before and I was going to find someone to put Executioner on it. Instead I put the Battlemaster enchant on King's Defender. Should I of gone with Executioner?? I don't see to many tanks with the Battlemaster enchant so I am assuming I make a bad choice on my enchant. I appreciate any advice."

I have tried them all since guild has funded most of my weapon enchants =). My Sun Eater had battlemaster on it for the longest time. Tried Executioner after Doom got it from ZA. But soon as my mallet dropped I switched to Mongoose.

Let me rank the 3 enchants according to my preference:
1. Mongoose
2. Executioner
3. Battlemaster

Battlemaster just doesn't proc that much to be useful at all. Even if it does, it doesn't heal that much! Do not get battlemaster. If you had access to Mongoose go with it, it procs alot and at the same time I see more benefits to tanking with the 120 agility increase and increase in attack speed than what Executioner will give you. I really dont like math and really dont want to go into numbers but if others want to post numbers feel free.

Update / Report

2007-12-12T09:53:00.000-05:00

There is not much to report. Sunday was the guild's ZA run, first night of bringing in other guildies since the officers have kept ZA raiding to specific people in the past couple of weeks. I was task to lead one group to try to take out bear and eagle boss at least. Wasn't going to try the the timed event since we needed to explain the fights to a couple of new people. Had some problems with bear boss but we did get him down after several tries. Eagle boss was easier, we killed him on our 2nd try. In my opinion, this is the easiest one. As long as everyone is alert and moves out of lightning storm, this fight is a breeze. Since we had time, we decided to try the lynx boss. We got him down to 40% on our best try and decided that it was a good introductory night of za for the guildies who hasn't been to ZA yet and called it after that wipe. It was a good overall run.

Monday was our guild's weekly run at Gruuls. I have been lobbying hard for a shot at High King using my retribution pally. We usually bring lots of tanks for this fight and most of the tanks are highly capable of tanking the adds. I know my responsibilies as main OT of the guild and I am not running away from it. This just gives other tanks a chance to experience and learn how to tank the adds when the time comes.

I got invited to tank Heroic Sethek after the raid and I took it. I haven't really been into any 5 man instances for a long time and I thought it would be fun. Besides it was the heroic daily for that night and it was a quick painless 5 badge run.

Tonight will be our guild's SSC run. Looking to down Lurker again and hopefully try some other bosses in there. I have around 300 nature resists already and who knows, maybe we can try Hydross tonight.

Pally Ret PVP

2007-12-07T20:16:00.001-05:00

My Retribution Pally

2007-12-07T12:18:00.000-05:00

I have a pally alt that I have been playing more and more. I was a holy pally pre-bc, holy pally leveling 60-70 and tried protection spec for some time after getting to 70. 2.3 introduced major changes to the retribution spec and because of that I decided to give it a try.

I am having lots of fun so far. I actually even started raiding kara with my alt pally regularly. I raided last night and our group cleared Moroes, Opera, Curator, Aran, Chess, Prince and Nightbane. I am averaging 487 dps based on WWS, ranking 4-5 among 6 dps classes which is not bad at all I think (also I run with mains which are way geared, people geared like BRK). Considering that I am having some mana issues on longer boss fights and some below par gear.

Gear and Stats:

I really didn't have ret gear after respeccing so I had to worked hard for it. I did a little research and come up with some stats/gear that I need to focus on. Basically I aimed for the following stats from gear:

1500 attack power
9% hit
25% crit rating

I basically had to resort to warrior gear. I didn't do much pvp before which didn't help the cause. You can look my toon up in armory: Altengerd of Drenden. Don't be too harsh though, its a work in progress. I need to replace my other trinket with something more appropriate, Hourglass from BM would be nice but I am having a hard time finding groups to go to BM with. With a full week of raiding, I just dont have any time to go do other stuff. I am trying to squeeze in daily pvps so that I can get more honor points to buy some new gear. I am looking to buy a new weapon or upragde my boots. I am still undecided yet.

With almost all melee based gear, mana is a big issue. I had to hold back on long boss fights. I can't go all out which is frustrating. I have to use tons of mana potions and sometimes just auto attack.

Talents

Here is my current spec - click here

With my mana issues, I am looking to respec to get divine intellect. Here is what I am thinking of changing - click here.

This spec is for pve/raiding and I am looking to move all of my points from improve might to divine intellect. Hoping that this would boost my mana pool up a bit. It is a shame I can't put all 5 points to divine intellect because I need to keep 1 point in the ret tree. I am undecided as to where to put that 1 point: Improve Blessing of Might? Deflection? Pursuit of Justice? Vindication? Eye for an Eye?

I had 5 points in improve might but when raiding, I rarely get to use it and always end up getting salv/wisdom/kings. I am thinking as soon as I get more gear and my mana efficiency gets more stable I can always respec and switch it around again.

Lurker Down!

2007-12-06T00:33:00.000-05:00

Never expected anything from tonight's raid. Aetherial Circle never really got close on our first Lurker try in SSC last week, so I was treating this as one of our learning night. But after our closest try tonight wherein we got him down to 40% I started to think that maybe we could do it tonight ..... On our 4th and final try before respawns, we got him down!

I am the main OT for this fight and my job is rather easy, my main task for this fight is to tank the 1 add that spawn in the middle. He hits rather hard and if not tanked and taken care of, he will teleport to the islands and start one shotting your range dps people. The add cleaves and hits for 5-9k (I think) so make sure you your trinkets, disarm, shield block up always .... The less damage you take, the easier for your healers to heal the other people around you. Aside from that, I make sure I stay alive by staying away from whirlwind and staying away from the spout. Make sure you have plenty of bandages ..... if your not tanking any adds and you take damage, step back a bit and start bandaging yourself. This applies also to any melee class thats taking damage in this fight ..... if your taking damage and you don't get a heal, step back and bandage. This will also allow your healers to catch up and throw you a heal. We have 2 tree druids and the hots they throw would take a couple of seconds to bloom which is why its important to stand back a bit and wait for it.

I was lucky to have enough points to bid on Mallet of the Tides. I have been saving my points and nothing really have been dropping that I can use so I was really happy.

This tanking mallet has more stamina, higher damage overall and +14 expertise which would boost my threat generation!

Jan'alai Problems

2007-12-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

AC tried to take down Jan'alai (the dragonhawk boss) again last night to no avail. We got him down to 9% on 1 try but didn't make the 10 minute enrage timer wherein we basically wiped the whole raid. That was the closest we got ...

We can't seem to get the timing right. This fight is all about trying to manage dps and managing the dragonhawks that hatchers spawn. You can't have too many or you may risk wiping the raid when he hatches them at 35%. On the other hand, taking out more dragonhawks sacrifices dps on the actual boss itself. Our group is a little light on AOE. We are running with only 1 mage and no warlocks so killing dragonhawks haven't been really smooth. Hopefully we get him down next time. Anyone having issues with this boss?

We have been successfully clearing the bear boss within 20 minutes. Having some plus hit if your tanking the bear boss is crucial. So make sure you either regem, replace some gear with +hit or eat some Spicy Hot Talbuk instead of stamina food if you are a little low on +hit. I can manage losing some stamina for this fight for +hit because we are running with 3 well geared healers and at the same time I have a well balanced gear to afford losing some stamina for +hit.

375 Blacksmith!

2007-11-29T13:08:00.000-05:00

Finally! I am now 375 BS and being exalted with most of the factions I can make most of the faction based BS patterns. Got to thank all the people who contributed and helped me get my last 6 points.

Guild went to SSC last night for the 1st time.... the planned Mag run didn't push through because we didn't have enough warlocks to handle adds. It was definitely exciting to see new content and SSC's adds weren't that bad. It was way easier than TK's adds. We skipped Hydross because tanks (me included) don't have the required resists gear yet (which is why I really tried to level BS). MT will need ice resist gear and me being the main OT will need nature resists gear. With 375 BS and exalted rep with Cenarion Expedition, I will be able to make the Wildguard Nature Resist Set.

The raid got some good practice on Lurker itself. Never really got close into killing him but I think everyone got a good sense of what to do next time and I am sure the raid will do better next time.

I will need to grab the following items/echants:

Wildguard Helm - need mats to make
Glyph of Nature Warding - head enchant from Cenarion Expedition
Pendant of Withering - need someone to make
Wildguard Breastplate - need mats to make
Inscription of Endurance - shoulder enchant from Violet Eye
Wildguard Leggings - need mats to make
The Natural Ward - guild already provided this one.
Nature Armor Kit (Chest, legs, hands, and feet augmentation) - need someone to make

Gear Updates

2007-11-27T10:57:00.000-05:00

Having 0 +hit really bite me in the ass last sunday when we went to ZA. The group was trying to complete the bear boss under the time limit. Taunting is part of what I had to do and he resisted my taunt twice. In short, we didn't get to take him down within the given time limit. We were late by 1 minute 20 secs I think (because we wiped and had to reset once). BUT the good thing about that is he dropped the boots that I badly needed. Jungle Stompers will enable me to re-gem and add +hit. The chess event has been bad for me, no king's defender and the battlescar boots so far (I have been to alot of chess event and I haven't seen it drop).

+hit will always be an issue when taking on the bear boss and I am planning to get more by replacing my range weapon with something with +hit on it. One option that I am looking at is the Veteran's Musket which requires having exalted rep with Honor Hold. The gun has +11 hit rating which would really help when tanking the bear boss. I think I will need 1 more SH run to get exalted and with some many raids going I need to set time out to run SH on off nights.

I was also fortunate to get into a kara group that took out Nightbane last night after our raid. He dropped Shield of Impenetrable Darkness which is really nice. Too bad the Panzar'Thar Breastplate didn't drop, because that would have been a bigger bigger upgrade for me. In any case, props to the guild especially for our GM Fio for taking the time out to gather a group just to kill Nightbane.

Zul'Aman Impressions

2007-11-20T13:04:00.001-05:00

I was picked by the guild to be OT of the main group thats going to do some exploratory run into ZA. I missed the Tuesday run because of work but made the Sunday one.

I really like the outdoor setting, its definitely a change of pace and atmosphere from Kara. The trash mob models are pretty cool especially the ones riding the bear mount. Trash are pretty easy. I don't recall having issues with them at all. Several times I find myself tanking 2-3 mobs at the same time. I am geared with Kara and Gruul's gear so I am not sure how hard they would hit on tanks with blue/green items. We wiped on the last group of mob before the 1st boss because we were trying to hunter trap a caster which didn't work well. We then decided to have the MT tank the mob on the bear mount and that 1 caster on our next try. MT died and at one point I had to tank 2 mob on bear mounts, luckily the three healers kept me alive and we didn't wipe the 2nd time.

The bear boss hits pretty hard but with 3 healers, you should have no problems. The way the trash hits is not comparable to how the boss hits. Big difference between trash and boss. The hardest part of tanking the bear boss is the switching by taunting you will have to do with the other tank. You will have to make sure to taunt at the right time, right after the boss switches form. Luckily my taunt didn't miss, I have zero hit rating and I was kindda concerned that my taunt won't hit and that would be very bad and will get the other tank killed. Everything went smoothly and we 1 shot the bear boss. I was hoping that the Jungle Stompers would drop since I really need an upgrade but it didn't.

The next boss we went after is Halazzi the Lynx. It took us several tries, 5 to be more exact to get him down. Halazzi at certain intervals will summon his lynx spirit that need to be off tank. As OT my job was to tank the spirit as soon as he spawns. Make sure to grab it as soon as it spawns, it will usually target your main healer after it spawns and will run faster. Have your intervene, thunderclap, tab target ready ..... Aside from that, if your dps is taking care of the totems he is an easy kill.

The 3rd boss we tried was Akil'zon the Eagle. I think he is the easiest among the boss we have tried so far. Everyone just have to be aware of the electrical storm and be ready to move. What I hate about this fight is that there is no need for a 2nd tank. I basically had to switch to dps gear and dual wield to help dps .... its a good thing if I can dps but I really can't. I guess some dps is good rather than no dps. We took him down on the 2nd try if I am not mistaken. Btw, he summons annoying birds that swoop down and do some damage so having range dps for this fight will really help.

We did tried the 4th boss but didn't get a chance to take him down. Again, don't think you will need a 2nd tank here and I hate it when they designed stuff like that. I was assigned to take down hawk hatching that spawns but honestly, dps can just burn them down ..... so in a sense I was gimping my party coz I really can't do much dps. This boss fight is more of a dps race since he enrages at 5 minutes and basically enrages again at 10 minutes. Basically the raid will have 10 minutes to take him down...

Overall, Zul'Aman is a good change of pace. It is something to look forward to and hopefully we get more successful on our next run. I will definitely keep you guys posted.

New Gear From Heroic Badges

2007-11-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

I have been reviewing the new items introduced by 2.3 .... a lot of new stuff but I am going to list down some items that I am looking to acquire as soon as I have enough badges:

I am currently using Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable which has less stamina and armor. With this new belt, we are replacing block rating with dodge rating. For warriors, block value is more important than block rating so this is a big upgrade in my opinion.

Another item that has caught my fancy is the Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx. I am currently using Vambraces of Courage which carries a ton of block value but the new bracers has alot more armor and alot more defense not to mention the new stat "expertise rating". This new stat is proving to be a big boost in terms of threat generation, obviously I don't have any data or concrete evidence but based on the forums that I have been reading the reports have been good overall.I have around 35 badges on hand and the been running daily heroics to get more badges .... I haven't been to Kara nor ZA yet after 2.3 but hopefully I will be getting the belt or the wrist next week.

2.3 Stuff

2007-11-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

2.3 arrived yesterday but RL work kept me from logging on early to catch our guild's ZA run. I was picked for our guild's exploratory run. They waited for me which I really appreciated but I just took to long ....

Anyway, I haven't had the chance to test out the new changes to the protection spec but here are the notables changes:

Devastate now applies Sunder Armor - no need to apply sunder armor before you use devastate.
Expertise - 1 expertise will equal to .25% chance to be dodged or parried. More hits means more threat.
Fear will no longer cause you to lose aggro.
Shield Slam now has a 100% chance to dispel.
Taunt, Challenging Shout will now be affected by Hit.

There are a bunch of new badge rewards too that I haven't reviewed yet. Which item are you looking forward to get? Something that is a big and must have upgrade and have set your sight on?

Maggy Anyone?

2007-11-12T23:05:00.001-05:00

AC one shotted Gruul's Lair tonight. One of the best night so far in terms of performance by everyone. Since we finished early, the raid decided to take a look at Mag's Lair even if we didn't have it on schedule till wednesday ....

I think the Mag fight requires alot more coordination, much more than any fight I have seen so far. Needless to say, we took down 3 channelers and wiped. It was a good try to see how it goes but hopefully this Wednesday we get some serious headway ....

Heroic Arcatraz

2007-11-09T09:37:00.000-05:00

Like I said in the last post, I have been running heroics alot and last night was no different. The same group makeup (warrior, mage, moonkin, shaman and druid) tried Heroic Arcatraz. I had my reservations about the place. It's one of the tougher normal instances around and I can't imagine how hard its going to be on heroic mode.

Well we got a taste of it, it is certainly harder. If your gunning for heroic badges then this place is not for you. But our group was kindda looking for a challenge since this is one instance I personally haven't tried yet in heroic mode. At the same time our mage was hoping that the Belt of Depravity dropped while our shaman needs badges and was also hoping Shiffar's Nexus-Horn to drop.

We skipped the 1st boss ..... wiped a couple of times leading to the 1st boss. The room where the 1st boss is location has some wierd aggro range. Pulled 2 at one point and that's instant death. Pesky slugs keep spawning and killing our resto druid at the start of the instance. 2nd and 3rd boss wasn't a problem but the meteor guys leading to the 3rd boss hits hard as hell and kept on killing our mage. He had to switch some gear out to get more stamina and we had our shaman chain healing to keep everyone alive while our resto druid kept me alive.

Overall, it was a good experience. Not really looking to go into that place again if we are just going for badges. I told my mage friend to go look for some other belts. The guild hasn't schedule any 25 mans and is currently working on running a bunch of people through kara all week.

Heroic Runs with a Resto Druid

2007-11-08T11:19:00.001-05:00

A couple of my friends have gotten to 70 and started running kara with the guild, which means that they are looking to run heroics too. We usually try to clear 1 heroic on off raiding nights to try to get my friends some nethers, gear and badges. Although we did heroic slave pens and heroic mech on 1 night.

Group makeup would be me as the tank, mage, moonkin, shaman and a resto druid healing us. As you can tell, we are a little light on CC which would mean that I have to sometimes tank 2-3 mobs at a time if needs be and just quickly burn down mobs as fast as possible. The nagas in heroic slave pens are manageable ... There are some big groups in slave pens leading to the last boss. 4 nagas and 1 beast wherein we usually sheep 1 and sleep the beast leaving 3 nagas for me to tank. The biggest problem I am having with this kind of pulls is aggro from our resto druid. He can heal me and keep me up even with 3 mobs hitting me but one way or another he pulls aggro ahead of our elemental shaman and mage. I find myself chasing those damn mobs around who is after our resto druid ..... I can't keep up and he is pulling aggro as he puts in big heals after big heals on me.

Anyone having the same issues running with a resto druid?

Tempest Keep - Impressions

2007-11-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

AC got 25 people and went to tempest keep for the 1st time with a goal of 1 shotting fel reaver. Well, that didn't happen .... We did get to Void Reaver and took 2 shots at him with no success.

The trash leading to Void Reaver will be a bigger issue than Void Reaver himself. There are a bunch of mobs to clear on a 2 hour timer. Ada'l is the 1st boss in tempest keep which we are bypassing to get to Void Reaver so that means clearing Adal's trash and Void Reaver's trash.

It really didn't help that we are only raiding with 1 mage that night. It is imperative and important especially when it is your first time to have adequate crowd control options. The path and hallways are narrow and with 25 people around it fills up quickly. So as a tank, you will want to be aware of where you tank your target.

Most of the mob will do aoe, stun and do a whirlwind attack which can kill clothies and leather wearers easily. One mob in particular (Stay Scyer - not sure but I think I am right) will punt you in the air causing an aggro wipe. Kill the nearest clothie until you taunt him back. Another thing to watch out for are the mobs who can cleanse CCed target.

It was a fun night of learning and I am looking forward to get more time inside. This instance is way different from Gruul's since you really don't have to kill that much trash in Gruul's. It definitely brings back memories of the 40 man MC runs I used to go to. The biggest problem with this kind of instance is the amount of AFKing people do that really slows down the momentum of the whole run. I also think buffing/rebuffing after every trash pull is not necessary. I mean if the whole raid wipes, then yes we can take the time and rebuff. If the majority of the raid has buffs and let say your missing AB or MARK of the Wild because you died on 1 trash pull do not stop the raid and say your not ready because I need more buffs...

I think buffing should be done at the start of the raid, after a big wipe, majority of the raids buff have run out and before a boss fight. I don't think missing AB or Might on a trash pull is going to matter a lot especially when its only you who doesn't have it.

Anyway, I did get an upgrade since 2 Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen drop. Our MT grabbed that 1st one and I grabbed the 2nd one. It is generally a good upgrade and have pushed my block percent to almost 24%. I am happy with it and I am looking forward to the next time we go in again for another try.

Void Reaver

2007-10-31T13:05:00.000-04:00

The guild as cleared Karazhan and at the same time taken down Gruul's a couple of times. We need more consistency in terms of attendance and in terms of getting the right group makeup so that we can kill him on a regular basis ... it hasn't happened but I think the guild has been progressing on a good pace.

Void Reaver has been put on schedule this thursday and I am looking forward to experiencing new content again. I am not sure what to expect in terms of tanking in this place. I will definitely keep everyone posted after the run.

Updates ....

2007-10-24T23:52:00.001-04:00

It has been awhile since my last post. Due to the fact RL work stuff is overwhelming not to mention all the raiding that I have been doing the past couple of weeks.

I co-lead a Karazhan raid on Wednesday and Sunday. Raid Gruuls on Mondays. Started running Karazhan with alts on Tuesday and Thursdays. Most of my Fridays and Saturdays are off wow days. As you can see I have a full week of wow and it has taken a toll. I think I need to cut back and get off wow when I am not raiding.

2.3 is live on the PTR and there has been lots of activity in the forums and other blog sites about changes to the warrior class. Of course since this is a protection warrior blog we are only going to closely monitor the biggest change 2.3 is introducing to warrior protection tanking .... buff to DEVASTATE. Below is the new tooltip for Devastate:

"Sunder the target's armor causing the Sunder Armor effect. In addition, causes 50% of weapon damage plus 35 for each application of Sunder Armor on the target. The Sunder Armor effect can stack up to 5 times. "

Basically, everytime you use devastate it applies a sunder amor. But the biggest question everyone from the warrior community had was if devastate will apply the same innate threat sunder armor applies .... Current sunder armor generates 301 innate threat. Current devastate generates 101 inntate threat. Would this mean applying the 2.3 path devastate would generate 301 + 101 = 402 innate threat?

Initial testing when the 2.3 went live wasn't encouraging applying devastate didn't generate the expected innate threat buff that everyone was expecting. But a new build has gone live again and it seems that from testing devastate now applies 402 innate threat .... Very significant change since warriors might have to revisit their normal threat generation cycle and change it up a bit.

I am really excited about the changes and but I don't really have time to go to the PTR to test things myself. All information has been gathered from one of the best warrior resource site around www.tankspot.com. I will try to keep an eye and see if the above change will be nerfed before 2.3 is released.

Tanking Karazhan - Curator

2007-10-11T09:54:00.000-04:00

Curator is designed to be a gear check for your party. It will test the dps output of the raid and at the same time mana endurance of the healers. Curator needs to be killed within 10 minutes if not then it will be a wipe.
I won't talk about the strategy on how to kill him since there are a bunch of site that explains it better but rather focus on what a tank/off tank should do and prepare for before taking on Curator.

Off Tank:

Our guild uses an off tank to absorb Hateful Bolts which is basically arcane damage that hits 4435-5999. Curator targets the 2nd person on the aggro list which should be the off tank in this case since no one should be attacking Curator while he is not Evocating. Curator evocates for 20 seconds and cause 200% extra (triple) damage during this time. As an off tank you will you need some arcane resist gear to to mitigate some of those hateful bolts and based on my experience around 100 arcane resist should be enough. Of course if you have more it would be better but you don't want to gimp yourself too much.

You will want to pick up some Enchanted Adamantite plate gear. They are crafted gear and should be easy to get. I think it would be wise to just gem them with +12 stamina. My guild was very nice to provide me with a Cloak of Arcane Evasion enchanted with + arcane resist which is an item that you will want to look for.

Main Tanking:

Your main job as the main tank against Curator is to make it easy for your healers. You will want to take as less damage as you can take. Remember, this is a dps race and at the same time a mana intensive fight. You don't have to worry about position or moving since the Curator will stick with you as long as you use your normal threat generation cycle. We have covered this topic before so I won't talk about that anymore. As in any fight make sure Shield Block is up everytime. Shield Slam should be used everytime its not on cooldown. You will have plenty of rage to work with in this fight so that won't be a problem. So what do you have to worry about? Timing and knowing when to use your cooldown or commonly known as oh shit buttons at the right time.

You want to use your trinkets like Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch or Adamantine Figurine before the 1st evocation. Reserve your Shield Wall and Last Stand to either after the 2nd or 3rd evocation where your healers might be low on mana. You want to make sure you have potions to use all throughout the fight.

On Evocations:

Very important part of the Curator fight is the evocation stage. Your party will have to use all their high end cooldowns to do some serious damage at this stage. As a protection spec warrior you will have lots of rage to work on during this fight. You will want to spam devastate and shield slam during this period to help your group take as much hit points of Curator. At one point I was seeing 1650 shield slam crits on him and 700+ devastate damage. 20 seconds is a lot of time for everyone to do some serious work on him so make sure you take advantage of this period to do some damage youself.

New Blog

2007-10-09T17:10:00.000-04:00

I have been trying to play my pally tank when I am not raiding and it has been a blast. Honor's blog about pally tank has lots of information about it so I added him to my blog list. I will have to check his blog more often from now on.

Go to http://honorscode.blogspot.com/ for more stuff about pally tanking.

Gruul No More

2007-10-08T23:13:00.001-04:00

AC took down Gruul last night on our 3rd try. It was a very successful raid overall as we killed High King on our 3rd try also.

Wipes are going to happen on High King just because the pull needs be coordinated but once the pulls go through, its just about having enough dps to kill down all adds quickly and dps we have.

High King dropped the warrior t4 shoulder token and I put in all my points for it. I wasn't going to take a chance. I was going to make sure I get it. The biggest upgrade the shoulder gave me is the +26 dodge rating that it comes with. This would mean that I can start resocketing my gems with +12 gems (which I did). The only piece of armor that I don't have socketed with +12 stamina gems is my leggings. I do have the Wrynn Dynasty Greaves but +12 stamina gems are so expensive that I am waiting for my t4 leggings before I resocket them.

The new armor and some new resocketed gems has pushed my unbuff hp to 13.4k with 512 defense, 23.97% dodge and 21.43% block. It is definitely looking good and as soon as the Darkmoon Faire (Terokkar Forest) rolls into town I can pick up my new trinket! I finally took the plunge and bought the Furies Deck from AH. Do not ask me how much it cost. I like to forget about it. Here is the link to the stats of the kill.

Grouping with a Rogue

2007-10-08T17:02:00.000-04:00

Do you group with a rogue regularly?

Do you have rage generation problems when grouping with one?

I am sure at some point you did, especially when the rouge your grouped with is stunlocking your target. Usually stunning the mob to death (happens alot on high dps groups) .... leaving you with no rage to attack the 2nd target and generate initial threat.

Doom over at his blog has written a good guide about stunlocking. You may want to check out his post about it and give your buddy rogues a few tips on when to stun lock and how to do it.

Update

2007-10-05T16:16:00.000-04:00

I haven't been playing much. Went to Kara and lead for the 1st time last Wednesday. I personally felt that I didn't do that well ...

Main tanking and at the same time raid leading is really something that I need to get use to. As a raid leader, your expected to call out certain events and let your party know specific things that is happening around a certain boss fight. There are just times wherein I will miss something and forget to call out things and at one point focused too much on the raid I didn't noticed my health going down ...

I have also been playing my alt pally alot. I leveled him as ret and has been holy ever since but I finally took the jump and change to protection. I got curious and wanted to try out the difference between tanking as a pally and tanking as a warrior.

It is way different! Love consecration and pulling with the Avenger's Shield. I wasn't expecting to have so much fun tanking as a pally but I am ... I need more gear and run steamvaults 2 times last night.

One thing that I really don't like about pally tanking is when I get silenced! I can't do anything and can't cast anything ...

Furies Deck

2007-10-03T10:51:00.000-04:00

I constantly look at the trade channel for random stuff, sometimes you might not know what will be available. So after Gruul's monday, I was in Shatt organizing my bank items when I saw someone in the trade channel selling the Furies Deck.

I have been eyeing this deck for a long time and was seriously thinking of buying the cards one by one. I really don't care about the chance but really want the +51 stamina and plan to use this trinket for encounters which I need more stamina on.

But since someone was selling the whole thing, I couldn't resist the urge to ask. I decided to pst the guy.... 1300G he said. I countered with 1200G but eventually settled with 1250G after asking for opinions in guild chat.

Everything was going well until the warrior logged off ...... pffft! He never came back .... I should have known. Why would a warrior who can eventually use this sell it. He told me that he was tired of tanking and going dps. I guess he changed his mind and never had the balls to tell me. I am mature professional person, if you changed your mind you dont have to log off and not say a word to me. It kindda pissed me off.

Heroic Black Morass

2007-09-30T15:15:00.000-04:00

I am lucky that I get to play with a bunch of very skilled players. Me, Tred, Doom, Grazlok (Grazen's warlock alt) and Jerkhead went into Heroic BM and cleared it with no problem.

We are currently working BM for Doom since he needs to get exalted to get the +15 agi enchant to gloves and at the same time looking for the Hourglass of the Unraveller to drop for him. Unfortunately, the hourglass never dropped but at least he got closer to being exalted.

The last boss dropped a pretty nice two hand sword called Quantum Blade. More reason to go arms now right?

Warrior Updates - Patch 2.3

2007-09-27T13:06:00.000-04:00

Alot of information have been appearing about warrior updates in the upcoming 2.3 patch and most of them are pvp related but I would like to point out 2 that are significant to pve protection tanking:

While arms/fury warriors aren’t meant to be as good as protection warriors at tanking, we do plan to make an additional to Tactical Mastery that may help them out. This talent will grant greatly increased threat from Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst when in Defensive Stance.

I haven't tried tanking with arms/fury so I am not sure if this is going to help or not. If mortal striking / bloodthirsting in defense stance produce the same effect as shield slam then this would really help generating threat.

It may also simplify things a bit to when we make Devastate combine the effects of Sunder Armor into it’s effect and be affected by all talents and items that affect Sunder Armor. We plan to make this happen in 2.3

This is huge. Based on my interpretation, this means using devastate is like using sunder armor. No need to apply sunder armor five times to use devastate. No need to bind 2 keys! If you have improved sunder amor, devastate will be affected too. I would like more information to how rage generation will be calculated from this new devastate. Overall this should help alot.

New Enchants

2007-09-27T09:26:00.000-04:00

Patch 2.2 came out and so did some new enchants. I get all my enchants from Doomilias who is a 375 enchanter with some pretty neat enchants.

I decided to switch some enchants around and try some of the new ones:

I replaced my +120 armor with this enchant because I am looking to resocket my gems and go with high stamina in time for Gruuls. I figure 120 armor can be made up from the gear that I currently have. I just need to find someone in guild who can cut Solid Star of Elunes. They are selling for about 50g each ...

This one is interesting. I took my +15 str out and replace it with +2% threat. I know I can get the +15 agility which might be better but I dont know anyone who can do it yet.

I tried this one last night in Kara and it is really hard to tell. I could have swear it was making a difference but with nothing to back it up with. Is there a mod out there that keeps track of threat? Anyone liking this enchant?

On the side note, me and Doom are on our 2nd week of leading a Kara group. We are leading the less experienced group and killing all bosses which means Attunmen to Curator on 1 night. It has been smoother as I am getting more and more comfortable marking and pullings. We started at around 8:15 and finished at around 11:30. I am hoping we can trim the time down to 10:30-10:45 next week as more and more people get more experienced and more gear.

Gruul the Dragonkiller

2007-09-25T09:41:00.000-04:00

AC went into Gruul's Lair with high hopes of actually downing Gruul himself. We started on time which is really nice.

High King went down on the 6th try. It is really all about the pull. Everyone needs to be coordinated and with new people being brought into the raid it will always take several tries to get it down. You guys can look at the stats right here. You will be redirected to the stat specifically on our High King kill.

After killing High King, we tried Gruul 3 times and we ate dust on each of our try. DPS was an issue and at the same time cave ins was deadly. People just need to become more aware of the cave ins and move out of em.

I was looking at the wws stats and found very interesting numbers in terms of tanking. I was mainly focusing on the 2nd and 3rd try on Gruuls. From what I am seeing, his average damage on a tank is around 5-6k and his crushing blows can go up to 10-11k. The crushing blows are the killer here, 11k blow is huge.

I guess I need feedback and comments from everyone who has experience MTing and OTing Gruul. I want to know what baseline stats you had before you went in for Gruul.

How much HP buff/unbuff did you have?
How much Armor? How much avoidance?
It might be time for me to stack up +stamina gems and is it ok to sacrifice avoidance/mitigation?
Should an MT have different stats from an OT? Is there any difference?

Edit: I have been reading alot of comments about having an OT off tank. Yes we have a couple of druids that can off tank, but we also have 3 protection warriors. If we had an OT off tank, what would the other protection warrior do? sit down and bandage? Would you rather have a druid in cat form doing damage than a protection warrior doing no damage?

Finally!

2007-09-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

It has been a real good week of Karazhan run for me personally. My group (I was assigned to MT the raid) cleared all the way to Curator last Wednesday wherein I picked up my tier 4 gloves. We picked up where we left of last night and headed in setting our sights on Prince. Before we started, we noticed one thing about our raid group ... We had no DRUIDS! For the 1st time raiding with AC, we had no druids in the group. How can that be?! AC is known for its druids .... lots of them.

I was tasked to make all the pulls and to my surprise the pulls are way easier than the pulls to Moroes. I guess the biggest issue on the pulls will be the Spell Shades that goes invisible. Marking them will be tougher than normal since there will be line of sight issues too. There is one neat trick that our raid always do when we have a priest. Cay explained our strategy clearly in one of her posts. Basically using Mind Vision to mark the invisible Spell Shades.

We did wipe a couple of times on Aran, which is expected with several new people and some people taking on different roles. Shermanar Great-Ring dropped and our pally OT gladly picked it up. Our Prot Pally has been picking up alot of Kara gear. It was basically his week as everything about tanking dropped.

After Aran, we did the Chess Event .... cleared all the way through Prince with no problems. At this point, I am comfortable with the pulls. I think the next time we go in, I should be able to do it without asking any questions and will be sure of the pulls.

So, we are at Prince again. He has been the bane of my wow raiding experience and I finally get the chance to MT him. We made our prot pally switch to healing gear (he did the same on the Aran fight). As you have guessed, we wiped on our first try because of crappy infernal drops!

On our second try, the wow gods was more helpful. Not a single infernal drops got close to our group. 1 did drop on us, but at this point he was down to 9% so there was no stopping us now as we just blasted his ass to hell.

He dropped my tier 4 helmet token. No druids, no other warriors. Just a priest who doesn't really need it so I was very happy.

Tonight will be our guild 2nd attempt at Gruul's lair and we are hoping to take down Gruul himself tonight.

Interesting Stats from the High King Fight

2007-09-21T09:16:00.000-04:00

I was looking at the stats provided by BRK on our High King kill. Apparently he made some mistake in the config file so the stats can't be 100% trusted. But it is still something interesting ...

The 1st image linked here shows the abilities I used throughout the kill. Things that really stands out from the stats: Miss %, around 15% of the time doing melee damage. Highest recorded shield slam is 1341.

The next image shows the damage in - or damage taken. Missed% (percent of all avoided hits) is 62.6% and Mitigated% (% of mitigated damage) is at 15%.

1st Tier 4 Gear!

2007-09-19T23:38:00.000-04:00

Group 1 cleared all the way to Curator with no problems. Was tasked to MT the raid tonight, honestly can't remember all the pulls and the marks. I know the pulls and how to mark it but I guess I didn't have the confidence and was more afraid of messing up in front of an experienced group. I have been OTing on almost every week I started raiding with AC and didn't really have to worry about marking and pulling. It feels different having more responsibilities in the raid ...

Anyway back to Curator! Like I said we got him down with no wipes. He actually dropped the warrior tier 4. See below:

Honestly it is not a huge upgrade to the Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden. The set bonus will be nice but thats not until I get to kill Prince or get a shot at the tier 4 stuff that High King Drops.

I am going to be losing a bit of stamina and some block % and value but gain dodge, parry, armor and defense. I am seriously thinking fo removing my sockets and just putting in two +12 stamina gems making the Iron Gauntlets my stamina gear.

High King Maulgar Down!

2007-09-17T23:44:00.000-04:00

AC finally got 25 people on at the same time and headed over to Blade Edge's Mountain to take a crack at High King Maulgar. The raid had a pit stop at Bash'irs Landing to witness an event. Basically at some point an npc will spawn and provide some flasks that the raid can you for High King. Below is a screenshot of the raid waiting for the raid to start.

The raid blow through the event. Grabbed a bunch of flask and header over to Gruuls. The event actually spawn another NPC which sells gems. I didn't get a chance to look at them because I was busy trying to tank trash mobs.

At around 8:30, AC's first 25 man raid zone into Gruul's Lair. It took sometime for the raid to get coordinated. I really didn't do my share of raiding pre-bc, so I can't imagine how hard is it to coordinate 40 people. So props to the raid leadership for keeping everyone on their toes.

Buffs need to be discuss, groups and strategies need to be explained. Tank assignments, kill order and just making sure everyone know what they are doing is very important. I think we made our first pull at 8:45?

This fight is all about the initial pull. 4 adds and High King himself needs to be pulled into their own little places. Here is our strategy and some key group makeups.

High King Maulgar - MT (Prot Warrior) with 3 healers on him.

Olm The Summoner (Walock) - OT (Prot Warrior) with 2 healers on him. 2 Warlocks enslaving the summoned felhounds.

Kiggler The Crazed (Shaman) - OT (Feral Druid) with 1 healer with him.

Krosh Firehand (Mage) - Mage Tank with high 14K HP. 1 healer on him.

Blindeye the Seer (Priest) - OT (Prot Warrior) I was on priest duty with 1 healer on me.My job was to make sure he is interrupted and not be able to cast heals. One big helped was the rogues we have on the group. They were able to rotate stun locking the priest and he went down like a squishy unable to cast any heals. As a protection warrior make sure you use shield bash (improved shield bash will really help) and concussion blow ready. Since we have rogues stun locking, I reserved my concussion blow when we was 35%.

After the priest goes down, the dps moves to the walock and start dpsing him. At this point, my job was to help the MT tanking High King by building aggro. As soon as priest goes down. I moved into High King, I used the Auto Blocker all through out and pop it as soon as got into High King. Warlock, then Mage then Shaman needs to go down next.

As a tank you have to remember 2 things when tanking High King:

He does a stationary whirlwind, Move out and bandage yourself. If he is still doing his whirlwind, go and bandage any healers or range dps that needs some first aid. Go back as soon as whirlwind ends. MT should stay on him even on whirlwind to make sure he has aggro.
As soon as he drops to 50%, he will drop his hammer reducing his melee damage. He will fear the MT and randomly charges party members. As an OT, have your Intervene and Taunt ready to pick him up. If no tank is around, be prepared to eat the whirlwind and stick with him. I used shield wall and last stand on a whirlwind and picked him up at some point. We had the feral druid stay back with the group to pick him up when he does an Intimidating Shout also. Hopefully, you have enough dps to burn him down.

Everyone was estatic as it was the guild's first attempt at high king and we took him down. Took several tries and 1 accidental pull by our mage but overall the healers and dps was crazy. I am sure you guys will hear from BRK and Doom about the dps and Cay and Tred about the healing on their respective blogs.

We did tried Gruul and got him to around 48% but it was too late to try him again. Next week should be interesting.

Tanking Karazhan - Attumen the Huntsman & Midnight

2007-09-17T23:41:00.000-04:00

So now you are ready and heading in for your first try at Karazhan. The first boss that you will face is Attumen and his boss Midnight. Lets get down to business shall we:

Trash Mobs Pulls

Undead and Undead Horses - As a tank you might be required to tank 1 or 2 so be ready for it. The biggest concern about tanking the trash mobs is POSITION. Alot of the mobs will be CC either by a priest shackle or at the very least a hunter trap. Another thing to consider will be that certain mobs FEAR. Pull back to the group get your priest to fear ward or have your shaman put up tremor totems to counter the fear. The undead horses does a random charge, so we have a boomkin or a hunter stay far enough from the group to take the charge.

There are a bunch of strategy guides out there but I want to focus more on my experiences to simplify things. You are either going to tank Midnight the horse or tank Attumen for the fight. If you have a feral OT/MT, I suggest he tanks Midnight the horse.

Midnight - just tank him where he stands. He doesn't aggro until you start the fight so don't be afraid to get comfy close with him. If your tanking the horse, your main job is to hold aggro and spam shield block. Cycle through your abilities and make sure to keep an eye on dps people trying to out aggro you.

Attunment - he will spawn at 95%, ideally you will be generating rage by attacking midnight at the start of the fight. This will give you enough to to start with Attunmen once he spawn. Make sure to keep an eye out for him and stand in between the group and Midnight. Make sure to pick him up as soon as possible or else he might one shot one of your squishes. I tend to Auto-Attack on Midgnight so I can focus on Attunment spawning rather than risking him getting away from me.

Once you have him, you will need to make sure you Disarm him as soon as you get a chance. It will radically decrease his melee damage output. You will be on your own as the dsp group will try to take out Midnight first, depending on your dps output. You will want to minimize the damage you take so make sure to spam shield block and disarm him as much as possible.Using Demoralizing Shout might help mitigate damage too.

There is a reflectable AOE curse that he does but I wouldn't want to waste rage or waste your attention on it. Just make sure your druids and mages decurse it off you as soon as possible.

As soon as they MERGE, the aggro table resets. DPS group should stop. Pop Bloodrage. Shield Slam him as soon as possible. This is where you need to pump alot of aggro to grab his attention or else he will kill the group. He does a random charge so we always have a boomkin/hunter stay in front of the group to take the charge. Aside from that, this fight is simple. Disarm, disarm, disarm will be something that you need to rememeber to do everytime you get a chance.

Preparing for Karazhan

2007-09-17T10:57:00.000-04:00

I am going to start another series of posts and talk about Karazhan in depth. It is basically to share my experiences, insights and hopefully some tips in taking down bosses.

So before you head over to Deadwind Pass for your first raid, lets go over some basic preparations you will need to make...

490 Defense - make sure you have at least 490 defense. I am sure by now every wannabe tanks know this by now. I don't want to explain and talk about it again. There are a bunch of website forums that explains the reason behind it.
12K HP - the trash mobs and bosses hits hard. You will need some hp to take the hit and 12K is enough to get you started.

Armor - if you get 490 defense and around 12k HP, your armor should be high enough. I cannot remember how much armor I had when I went into kara. 11k-12k armor should be enough.
Consumables - Health Potions / Rage Potions are on top of my list. I always make sure I have enough of them. Bring around 10 health potions and about 5 rage potions. As an off-tank you will want rage potions to help you out on some fights since you will be looking competing with the MT for threat and without the boss/mob hitting you, there will be good chance that you won't have enough rage to keep up.
Gear - if you have 490 defense and around 12k HP, chances are you know what your doing and have been grabbing the right gear for the MT/OT kara role. If not, I have started posts about gear that you would want pre-kara (check the links on the right). I know its not complete but it is a start.
Avoidance - I know tanks that like to stack high stamina gear. Basically putting +12 stamina gems on almost all gem slot but I think thats not a requirement. What I liked doing was making sure my parry/dodge and block totals to at least 25%. This ensures dodge/parry or at least a block everytime I have Shield Block up.

First up on the list is Attumen the Huntsman & Midnight. It is the 1st boss and he is optional. He is easy and should be no problem. Look for it on the next post.

High King Maulgar

2007-09-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

I haven't been able to make Kara raids. Guild running 1 group last week and I wasn't picked on any of the runs. So .... nothing new for me to talk about in terms of my raiding experience.

Tonight should be our guild's 1st attempt on the High King. I am not sure if we have the right party makeup for the try or even enough people for it but I am really looking forward to it. Raiding has been such a fun experience for me that all I want to do is raid now. 1 week of no raiding makes me a sad warrior. The guild finally cleared kara. They took down Netherspite and as far as Kara is concerned, AC has cleared all bosses.

I have no idea what my role will be tonight so I am staying protection. I don't know if I will be off tanking High King himself or some of the other adds that he has. I am crossing my fingers and hope that tonight's raid pushes through.

I Hate Prince!

2007-09-12T09:01:00.001-04:00

I guess based on the title you guys know what went down. AC (my guild) went in Monday with high hopes to down Prince with the following group makeup: 2 Prot Spec Tanks, 2 Healers and 6 DPS. We tried several times (4 times to be exact) and on every try we get infernals to drop out of control.

After the 3rd time, I decided that I am gimping the raid too much.

I informed the raid and told them to take me out and replace me. The leaders decided to try one more time with me and I said OK.

4th try .... wipe! I said that's it. I am out.

Believe me I would want to stay but I felt that the group deserved to kill Prince that night and if I have insisted we would get nowhere. I took one for the team.

They took Doomilias as my replacement and they one shotted him!

I knew it! Faster dps means the group will have to deal with lesser infernal drops.

Never had the chance to go in for Netherspite since by that time, mobs have started to respawn. From the comments you guys have been leaving, it seems that it can be done with 2 tanks. I haven't read any strat on the fight and I might need to just to be prepared.

The guild is taking a different approach this week, skipping optional bosses on 1st night of raid and just going for the required ones. So Moroes, Opera and Curator on the 1st night.

We have our sight on Gruul's monday to see where our guild stands. Hopefully we have enough.

Tred is thinking of going resto. No idea how that would go.

I know, I know .... It was my chance to respec and I didn't do it. I know I said I would respec and I didn't. I guess it was my own fault. Ok ... I pussed out. I didn't feel comfortable going into raid directly in a new spec. I want to be comfortable. I want to be used to it.

I haven't been playing much, I find myself logging in just to raid.

I have my keys and stuff ...

Don't feel like doing heroics and gettting badges since I don't feel they are all huge upgrades...

What is left to do? Let me ask other level 70 protection spec tanks. What do you do on your free time?

Prince - Needs to Die!

2007-09-10T12:43:00.000-04:00

So after last week's Kara raid where in we cleared up to Chess in one night. AC started at 6pm on the dot and set our sight on Aran, Prince and Nightbane. We took down Aran even if the fight started pre-maturely and left a hunter outside the door. It was pretty funny, we basically 9.5 man it since the hunter's pet got in and did some damage. At some point, 2 water elementals actually went after the hunter outside and helped us since we were all polymorphed. He basically took one for the team.

He dropped Shermanar Great-Ring and since no feral druid was around, I grabbed it. This ring is actually comparable to Ring of Unyielding Force which you can grab for 25 heroic badges.

It has a lot more stamina but less armor. This is going to help me with my stamina gear as we get ready to head into Gruul's next monday.

After Aran, we moved quickly to try Prince! ZOMG, we get very very bad infernal drops. What's new? The random drops is really really making me dislike Prince. I haven't down him and I am beginning to doubt if I will see him drop or not. I was spec protection so I this is the part where I feel useless again. On our 3rd attempt our rouge sensing a wipe vanish. This caused him to bug on us. He became an invalid target and we couldn't attack him which pissed everyone off. DPS wasn't really a problem with this group so I really don't want to spend gold to respec. If we can 9 man aran, we should have no problems this piece of Sh*!t

Raid decided to forget about Prince and try Nightbane. Since we need 3 healers and only 1 tank, I was asked to switch and bring my Holy Pally in! I have heal 5 mans with no problems but this is going to be my 1st raid healing and I am asked to heal for Nightbane! Good thing that I am the 3rd healer who's only task is to help heal the MT and throw blessing of protection to our mage and some heals to the raid when Nightbane goes into the air. We wiped on our 1st try since most of the people in the raid are new to Nightbane. On the 2nd try, we took him down and I still had 8k mana. He is definitely easier than Aran or Prince.

We are going to try Prince again tonight and hopefully have 3 tanks to try Netherspite. We need the right party make up to take on Netherspite and I am looking forward to beating his ass.

New Pants!

2007-09-06T08:56:00.000-04:00

AC did a bit of shuffling and boy it was a good mix of people last night in Kara. The group was able to clear up to Chess in one night! I didn't go in till Curator but look at what I got from him!

I loved my Timewarden's Leggings and I have been wearing it for the longest time. It is great but it is time to put on the purple epic pants. I took a screenshot of my current stats and here is how I look currently:

I really like what I am seeing. This is actually my stamina gear because I am using the Vortex Walking Boots. I keep my Sha'tari Wrought Greaves handy in case I want to have more avoidance, putting it on would bump my dodge to 23%. From my experience, 13k-14k unbuff HP in Karazhan is enough.

One thing that I am looking to get is a Nethercleft Leg Armor for the new pants and I was hoping BRK can do it.

Gnomeragan Auto-Blocker Impressions

2007-09-06T08:36:00.000-04:00

I finally decided to go for it last night and spent all 41 Heroic Badges on a trinket. Tell you guys what? I am somewhat disappointed. Without the trinket activated, I was doing around 500 Shield Slam damage, with the trinket turned on its around 700. When it crits, it does around 1500. Not bad, but personally I don't think it is something to be excited about.

One thing I will need to see is how much this thing is helping with the damage reduction. Since this is increasing block value it would be interesting how much damage it is reducing. Here is the formula: X = [(Shield block value * 1.3) + ((Strength / 20) - 1)]. Where in X will be the amount of damage reduced and block. (1.3 will be the increase because of a warrior's Shield Specialization talent.). I will do some further comparision and get some kind of mod (scrolling combat text) to see the block values.

Random Stuff

2007-09-05T12:24:00.000-04:00

I guess by now everyone knew what happened to my Kara group last week. No Aran and obviously no Prince. No respeccing was needed either since we didn't get anywhere for me to try it. It is a new week and I am set to raid from Curator-Prince. A new pally tank is off-tanking from 1st boss to Opera. We have a different mix of people this week and hopefully we get far. I am not going in till Sunday or Monday, depending on the availability there is a chance no raid will happen on sunday.

Been doing alot of heroics lately, especially Slave Pens. Cleared it last week and cleared it again last night with only Doomilias as our main source of cc. Picked up a pug warlock 1st time we did it and for some reason, seduce didn't work. I have no idea why since most of the mobs were humanoids. I forgot what dropped but I think Tred might have picked it up.

Last night's run was more meaningful since it was our friendy elemental shammy Jerkhead's 1st ever heroic. He was well rewarded because Pauldrons of Wild Magic dropped from the last boss. It looks so nice and badass. I am very happy for Jerkhead since he has been running alot of pugs to improve his gear and at the same time get rep. He doesn't rely on anybody to get into groups and takes it upon himself to improve.

I finally have enough Badge of Justice to get the Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600. I will get it tonight and test it out.

Ogri'la - Exalted

2007-08-31T09:31:00.000-04:00

I got exalted this week and got a group together to get some crystals to actually have enough to buy 1 item off them.

I was initially picking this up for my dps set after taking a close look, I realized that I can actually can use this for tanking too (I can put in 2 Solid Star of Elune to make it viable for tanking). It has more stamina compared to Sha'tari Wrought Greaves. I am going to lose agility +21 agility but gain Armor, Strength, Stamina and Critical Strike Rating. What do you guys think?

Another thing I am considering is picking up the same boot and slotting dps gems on it. It doesn't say unique so I am assuming I can get another one of it right?

I am also going to pick up the Crystalline Crossbow which I can use for my dps set. It has agility and hit rating that should help me alot in dps.

Heroic Shadow Labs

2007-08-29T12:41:00.000-04:00

I am sure by now you guys have read all about the guys foray into Heroic Shadow Labs. Tred and BRK has posted their versions of our run so I won't talk about it again. I did get a nice gem after Murmur went down. I haven't decided where to use it yet, dont like rushing stuff.

I have also decided to go armorsmith and started working on the bs quests for it. I will need alot of mithril and I dont know if I will have the energy to do it. At least it is something to do while not raiding. I found this in wowwiki. I am not sure how accurate this is but here is a list of materials one will need to become an armorsmith:

40 Iron Bars, 30 Steel Bars, 342 Mithril Bars, 26 Truesilver Bars, 12 Heavy Grinding Stones, 9 Solid Grinding Stones, 4 Citrine, 2 Aquamarine, 20 Thick Leather, 18 Mageweave Cloth and 1 Heart of Fire.

Wait, did I just see 342 Mithril Bars? I guess I will be farming alot of them!

1% - Nuff Said

2007-08-28T09:03:00.000-04:00

We tried over and over all night. Prince's infernals was being a bitch. We got him down to 3%, 2% and at one point 1% and still at the very last second see an infernal drop on top of our dps group/tank. I hate the Prince fight. Too much luck involved! Several times we had our group closed off and trapped by infernals.

I have never felt so gimped in my wow life. 7k damage and we could not finish him. I really regretted not going in as arms/protection last night. I had enough, either I have to sacrifice my spot and have a dps replace me or go in as arms/protection just for the Prince fight. It was a really a downer for the morale of the group. Does any warriors out there feel the same way? Are you OTing and find yourself gimped in some fights in Karazhan?

I am going to try an arms/protection hybrid so that at least I can still take the adds.

Armorsmith or Weaponsmith?

2007-08-27T11:44:00.000-04:00

I am trying to level my blacksmithing. It is a pain but I got nothing else to do. I still need my epic flyer but it is taking so long. Any warriors out there have any comment on which specialty to take? Did you pick armorsmith or weaponsmith?

Prince Malchezaar

2007-08-27T09:18:00.000-04:00

I am sure you guys will read about AC's exploit through kara from my friend's blogs. AC has been consistent and was able to run 2 groups this week. Group 1 (my group) who got through Opera last wednesday picked at kara's back entrance and started clearing through Curator. We got him down no problem. He enraged right after 2 evocations which means our dps was really really good. Guess what dropped? Yup warrior Tier 4. Since our MT/Raid Leader had more points, I had no chance of taking this from him. Hopefully, I would have enough points the next time it drops.

We proceeded to Chess event and nothing worth mentioning drops. Our target tonight was at the very least getting Aran. I was concerned since there were alot of new people in Group 1 and we all know everything needs to be perfect. Arcane Explosion, Fireballs, Frostbolts, Arcane Missles, Blizzard and Flame Wreath - he does a ton of stuff and the raid group needs to be coordinated and paying alot of attention to what he is doing. We wiped our 1st try, we got the flame wreath as he was summoning the water elementals. We can't move and water elementals killed us. On 2nd try we got him down. It was the most exciting and most awesome recovery of a group that I have been part of. For some reason, half of the people in the raid got caught in the arcane explosion but the group carried on and beat Aran's ass. He did dropped the Shermanar Great-Ring. Our feral druid really wanted it so I let him get it. It is definitely a nice ring and with a lot of stamina. As long as our group improves I am happy.

Since we gained alot of ground, we all decided to try Prince Malchezaar. Let me tell you, I hate this fight. Infernals drops is the big killer. They drop randomly and we got very unlucky. One time it dropped right on top of Prince and our MT. Several times it dropped and closed off our range dps group. What else can I say? We tried 5 times I think.

We are going to try again tonight and I was thinking of respeccing arms/fury just for the Prince since I am the off-tank. Only 1 tank is needed and I really felt gimped fighting him. If I don't respec, I need to go in full dps gear.

Maiden Drops Lootz

2007-08-22T23:30:00.001-04:00

AC finally got 2 groups scheduled and ready. Group 1 was to raid tonight (I was part of group 1 as OT) and Group 2 raid on Friday. I really have to commend the leadership behind the guild as they try to organize and push for 2 groups. Hopefully everything works out well and we maintain the 2 groups next week.

As for group 1's run, everything went smoothly. No wipes no problems at all. Cleared all the way to Opera. The group would have pushed for Curator but we had people that needed to leave. Maiden drops the Barbed Choker and I was able to win it.

The Barbed Choker of Discipline is definitely an upgrade to what I have. Big boost to stamina will really help push my baseline HP up. The next raid is scheduled for Sunday. The group is looking to get Curator, Chess Event and Shade of Aran. I have a bit of a problem since I don't usually raid on sundays (I tend to spend more time with my family on weekends). But if I want to see anything past curator, I will need to show up.

Epic Items from Heroic Badges

2007-08-21T10:27:00.000-04:00

Here is my 1st attempt at comparing items you can get from turn ins, what I have currently equipped and drops from Kara that I would want to have

Heroic Badge Turn In:
Necklace of the Juggernaut
Neck
+19 Agility
+33 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 22.

Currently Equipped:
Strength of the Untamed
+27 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 19.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 18

Maiden Drop:
Barbed Choker of Discipline
Binds when picked up
Neck
+39 Stamina
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases defense rating by +16
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 21

I like the Barbed Choker of Discipline. The Juggernaut is a minimal upgrade to my currently equipped neck piece. From the looks of it Juggernaut will have better avoidance than what I have currently but do I want to spend 25 badges for it? NO.
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Heroic Badge Turn In:
Ring of Unyielding Force
Finger
294 Armor
+31 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 22.

Currently Equipped:
Violet Signet of the Great Protector
Finger
392 Armor
+37 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 19.

Currently Equipped:
Elementium Band of the Sentry
Finger
+24 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 20.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 19.

Shade of Aran Drop:
Shermanar Great-Ring
223 Armor
+36 Stamina
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases defense rating by 23.

This is more of a trade off than an upgrade. I am keeping the Voilet Eye. So that means, if I want to get the Ring of Unyielding Force then I have to get rid of Elementium Band of the Sentry which means losing 19 dodge rating in favor of stamina and armor. I love dodge rating more than anything else right now so I am still undecided on this one.
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Heroic Badge Turn In:
Faceguard of Determination
1129 Armor
+36 Stamina
Blue Socket
Meta Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Durability 100 / 100
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases defense rating by 32.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 24.
Equip: Increases your shield block rating by 24.

Currently Equipped:
Eternium Greathelm
1178 Armor
+31 Strength
+48 Stamina
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Dodge Rating
Durability 100 / 100
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases defense rating by 34.

This one is tricky, lets try to break it down:
1129 Armor <> 1178 Armor, minimal effect.

+36 STA
+12 STA Blue Socket
+18 Stamina & 5% Stun Resist (Powerful Earthstorm Diamond)
+6 STA from Gem Bonus
Total +72 STA

+48 STA
+12 STA Blue Socket
Total +60 STA

Edited: I totally missed the +6 sta gem bonus from the Faceguard. It is looking like the Faceguard might win me over with it's +24 dodge rating if I am needing more avoidance. Let us not forget that we can put 2 Solid Star of Elunes on Eternium Greathelm to bump up the STA to 84. Again, choices! Do I want avoidance or stamina/hp.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heroic Badge Turn In:
Farstrider Defender's Cloak
Back
267 Armor
+30 Stamina
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases the block value of your shield by 38.

Currently Equipped:
Devilshark Cape
Back
78 Armor
+22 Stamina
Requires Level 70
Equip: Increases defense rating by 20.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 18.
Equip: Increases the block value of your shield by 29.

Why do I have a feeling alot of the items available are not really upgrades but trade offs? We are going to lose +18 dodge rating and gain stamina if ever we decide to go with the Farstrider Defender's Cloak.

So to summarize, I am looking to save all my badges in the meantime and look to get Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600 first.

Heroics - 8 Badges

2007-08-21T09:44:00.000-04:00

First off, congrats to AC last night for taking down for the 1st time Prince. Click here to download video. Unfortunately, I wasn't part of the group that took him down. The last time I was in Kara was when we took down Aran. Went back last week wednesday to clear up to Maiden and that was it. It is not looking too bright but hopefully 2 groups can be formed so that everyone will get a chance to raid.

With that said, I have been busy running heroics. I went to Heroic Mana Tombs and Heroic Sethek Halls last week. Cleared Sethek with no problems because it was an all guild run. Mana Tombs wasn't so kind with my pug group. We didn't kill the last boss but nevertheless I got 5 badges on a nights run.

Last night put me in the same situation so I was able to get some guildies to try Heroic Underbog. Cleared everything with no problem. Wiped a couple of times because I miss some spores and didn't mark them. For some reason, they move in the same pattern and you wouldn't expect 2 to split off till you pull. Anyway, I was happy to get 4 badges on this run and able to pick up Eye of the Stalker. Something that I really don't need but I didn't want this epic item to just get sharded. Might be useful when I go arms or something.

Since I wasn't satisfied with 4 badges, I decided to look for another heroic run. Heroic Mech was available and it was a quick run so I decided to join. Got another 4 badges doing a full clear.

Last night's run netted me 8 badges, which brings my total badge count to 24. I haven't been really paying attention to what I would get but since I am getting close to 25 badges ... I will be reviewing the items available to see if it's worth getting.

Mighty Rage Potion

2007-08-14T13:40:00.000-04:00

I am finding this potion to be more useful than ever especially in Kara. I have been off tanking a bit and without the mob hitting at me primarily, rage has been a bit of an issue for me. This is definitely useful for the Moroes fight, for an off tank mostly. It is imperative to be 2nd on the aggro list with Moroes since he will gouge/stun the 2nd person on the aggro list. The MT and the OT will be fighting for aggro and having an emergency rage pot in hand allows you to quickly get a shield slam off in times of emergency.

AC uses an off-tank for the Curator fight to absorb his deadly arcane attack. He attacks the 2nd person in the aggro list and without rage, it will be difficult to stay 2nd on the list. The rage potion comes in handy if your lagging behind and need to quickly boost your threat generation.

Lastly, if you end up having to dps - full rage execute doens't sound too bad either!

So if your headed to Kara and your off tanking especially on Moroes, bring a couple of Mighty Rage Potions along!

Shade of Aran Executed!

2007-08-13T22:54:00.001-04:00

AC (my guild) took a big step tonight and took down Shade of Aran for the 1st time. We one shotted him with no problem at all. BRK got some phat lootz which he will sure be talking about.

Check this screenshot of the kill. Look closely at the combat log and you will see that I was able to execute for 2277! I was in BattleStance and took a mighty rage potion and got to full 100 rage before executing!

Edit: We did try and failed 2 times on Prince. We got him down to around 50% on both tries but the we got very very unlucky with the Infernals!

Open Discussion

2007-08-13T14:24:00.000-04:00

I received an email which I think is a good topic for discussion. I would love to hear from everyone and what they think about the following:

"I do have a question for you, if you don't mind emailing or blogging about it. It's about the age-old argument that any warrior who isn't prot may as well give up all hope of raiding or doing heroic instances.

I know there are advantages to being protection for doing raids and heroics. But, taking into consideration gear and skill, a good arms/fury warrior should still be a perfectly viable tank if no prot tank is available. Further, a good arms/fury warrior can possibly out-tank a prot warrior if gear and skill are factored in.

None-the-less, my guild is still skittish about using any tank that isn't prot. I've posted about threat generation based on the blogs I've sifted through. I've also posted about threat generation based on location that I learned off your blog. I'm not sure what else to do to give my fellow guildies a comfort level that a non-prot warrior with over 500 def, 12k health and I forget what amount of armor can successfully tank heroics and raids.

Why is there such reluctance to accept any build but prot?

Is there anything else I can do to understand my own build better and then play better to prove out the value of the build?

Is there any advice or instruction I can give to people who group with me to help them understand what differences may exist with playing with a non prot warrior?

It's frustrating…prot build has so little dps, I find it frustrating doing my daily quests. And because of the difficulties I have getting groups, I can't see going prot for the sole hope of maybe getting a raid invite once a week, and maybe a twice-weekly heroic run."

I already responded but I am sure you guys wouldn't mind sharing your thoughts too!

Exalted with Sha'tar - The Crest of Sha'tar

2007-08-12T16:30:00.000-04:00

I have been quitely working my way to getting exalted with Sha'tar. It really felt like forever but finally I was able to get a group together to Mechanar to get my last 700 rep. I am really liking where my warrior sits right now. I am now carrying 3 epic out items. The Sun Eater for my main hand, Crest of Sha'tar for my shield and The Gryo-balanced Khorium Destroyer. It is really looking good!

This is what my armory looks like right now. Lots of defense. I am not right where I want my stamina to be at right now. I am also low on my str.

The Quest For An Epic Gun

2007-08-10T14:34:00.000-04:00

I was approached recently by a guildie who offered to make me an Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer provided that I supply that mats. An Epic Gun? How can I refuse such offer, especially that he is taking care of the Primal Nether!

With that offer in mind, I quickly buckle down to work and started looking for the mats

Hardened Adamantite Tube - I couldn't find anything in the AH. Good thing that the guildie can make this item so I went ahead and bought 3 Hardened Adamantite Bar.

Khorium Bar (20) - Freaking expensive. The bars are like 10 gold each. So I settled in buying ores and smelting it myself. Funny thing is, I am a miner. I can probably get all ores I need to make 20 bars just by mining. But how long would that take?! I have no patience, so I am buying it and taking the easy way out.

Felsteel Stabilizer (4) - Again, nothing in AH. So i went ahead and bought 8 felsteel bars, since the guildie can make it too.

Primal Fire (12) - feeling a little light after spending so much gold on mats, i decided to wait a bit and farm for the primal fires. I spent like 1 hour and got 2 primal fires out of the fire elementals in BEM. Looks like I will be farming more this weekend, after doing my Ogrila dailies.

Primal Air (12) - bought 12 for 18G each. no way I am farming this ones.

Primal Nether - guildie is providing, not sure how much I should pay him for this. 100g? 200g?

Tanking Multiple Targets

2007-08-07T15:13:00.000-04:00

This is a long overdue followup to my post about Threat Generation. I said I was going to talk about tanking multiple targets but I just haven't found the chance to really get into it. Tanking multiple targets is one of the hardest thing a warrior have to do. But if everything goes smoothly, it can be the most enjoyable part of tanking.

So how do I tank multiple targets? Do I follow the normal threat generation cycle I specified on my 1st post? Well the answer is no. Tanking multiple targets require very good coordination with your party. It is hard to talk about tanking multiple targets because it varies in different situations.

Does your party have any crowd control abilities? How many?
What type of mobs are you facing? Are they immune?
Do you have good dps in your party? Can they take down mobs fast?

As you can see I have pointed out some of the different things to consider when you and your party is looking to take down multiple mobs.

Tanking multiple targets boils down to coordinating a KILL ORDER. Deciding on a kill order means that all dpser will be focusing on 1 target at a single time maximizing your party's dps to kill a mob fast. This would mean that you will have to generate as much threat as possible in a short amount of time to hold the 1st target in place.

For the purpose of this post, lets consider we are about to pull 5 mobs. Hopefully 2 will be crowd controlled (mage sheep, priest shackle/mc , rogues sap, hunter trap and warlocks seduce are the most obvious ones). This would leave us with 3 targets to tank. Now, you really wouldn't want to target 3 target at the same time right? I know I wouldn't want to.

Ideally we want to CC mobs that have high hp or mobs that does something special like heal, fear, mc or insane amount of dps. This would leave us with the following types of mob:

0. Pet Type/Not Elite Mob - sometimes you get a pet add or non elites, this type of mob needs to go down first and I will usually assign it to our top dps'er. Shouldn't worry about tanking this target if your dps'er is good enough.

1. Squishy/Caster Type Mob who dies easily should be the 1st kill. This is where Improved Shield Bash is useful. Shield bashing will silence the caster and at the same time interupt spells they are casting and give you enough time for your dps'er to kill the target before they deal any serious harm to the party. If your party is good enough, shield bash quickly switch to the 2nd target.

2. Melee Type Mob who doesn't hit that hard
3. Melee Type Mob who hits hard or has high hp

As as tank, you will have to try to seperate this 2 mob into a group. While your party is trying to take down the squishy type caster, it is your chance Thunderclap the 2 mobs. Thunderclapping the 2 mobs needs to be executed with extreme care. You don't want to thunderclap and break CC. This is why positioning is another important factor in tanking multiple mobs.

Thunderclap - Both Target
Shield Slam/Revenge - 1st Target
Sunder 2nd Target
Repeat Cycle by going back and forth between the 2 targets

Save Taunt for emergency use. Do not use taunt unless a dps'er or healer pulled aggro from mobs that breaks away from CC or mobs that breaks away due to lack of threat.

Save Concussion Blow also on emergency use. Or you will want to use it to stun and hold the 3rd target while you build aggro on 2nd target.