Arms Tanking?

I always keep my Friday nights open. There's always that chance that I'll come home and my wife will have made plans for us to go hang out with some of our 'couple' friends. “Sorry, honey, I can't go, I have a raid tonight” is not an acceptable answer.

But Friday we didn't have any plans, so I logged on planning to do some dailies, but not really sure what else I would do.

I saw a friend from Heren Isterion advertising for an OS25 and I asked if I could bring my Warrior alt. They said sure. While I was waiting for them to fill up, I got another whisper, this time from Dotslover (I'll let you guess his class), buddy of mine in Limitless, which is basically my old guild, Mal Katai, under a new name. They were running Naxx25 and wanted to know if I wanted to come.

I was again on my Warrior. They already had their tanks sorted out, a Protection Paladin I knew, and two Protection Warriors I was familiar with my from time in Mal Katai.

Altar of Storms is a small server Alliance side, so after a while you get to know quite a few people. This is especially true if you jump around guilds as much as I have.

We cleared out Spider, and Plague without much problem. My DPS was respectable at around 2.4 raid buffed depending on the fight. I did worse on Heigan because I was concentrated on staying alive. I moved before the tank did most times. But I was generally in the lower part of the top 10 on most fights.

We downed Loatheb and the dropped the Warrior shoulder token. I rolled, but lost to one of the Protection Warriors. This was a guy I had shared tanking duties with back in Mal Katai in late Tier 4 and most all of Tier 5.

I glanced at his gear when I saw him roll Need because I was expecting a greed roll from him.
Now I'll tell you right off I can't tell one Warrior tier from another just by looking at the name or graphic. I figured I'm on an alt, he's probably rolling for his offset gear, so no big deal. It was only after the loot was distributed that I realized he was wearing Level 70 Tier 5 Shoulder and Gloves along with the Hydross Defense trinket.

I asked a couple of friends via whispers and confirmed that indeed, he had stopped playing for a while, and had just recently hit 80. I felt like a real heel for rolling against him on the shoulders and was really relieved that he had won them.

The third tank was another Protection Warrior. I knew him from my early days at level 80. He's a kid and his dad was a fantastic Holy Paladin. I felt kind of bad for him because he was having rough night with computer/latency issues. It's tough enough to tank when everything is going perfect. Fighting lag and FPS issues makes it that much harder.

I whispered the raid leader to let him know I could tank for them if needed. He didn't respond.

Okay, not interested. That's cool. Either that or he missed my tell completely.

I was basically a guest in this raid, so I didn't say anything more.

We got to Gluth and poor kid got dc'ed. My freshly 80 Tier 5 buddy was maintanking. I think the Protection Paladin had either gone Ret or was helping out with the chow. I honestly don't remember.

As you might know, Gluth puts a stacking debuff on the tank that makes it harder and harder to heal him. Each stack reduces healing by 10%. Eventually, the stack would reach 10 (100% less healing) and your tank would go down. Of course, the way you handle this is for two tanks taunt off each other, allowing one tanks stack to fall off and reset to zero. Well our 2nd tank had just DC'ed, and we were on an express train to Wipesvilles, population: Us.

It was actually thinking of my friend, Danath, a Warrior from Heroes Inc, and one of my 3s partners, that gave me the crazy idea for what to do next.

When he gets focused in Arena, he uses a macro that equips his Sword and Shield and switches him to defense stance.

So I hit my ItemRack for my Tank set. I'm in combat so only the Weapon and Shield equip. I pop into Defensive stance, and run up and taunt the boss. The healers start healing me and I tell Mr. Tier 5 to taunt him off me as soon as he's clean.

I popped Shield Wall the first time out to survive Gluth beating on me. I was of course crittable in my 'leet' Arms DPS gear. I'm Mr. All Greens and an Ironsoul after all. After Mr. Tier 5 taunted him back off me, I started frantically looking for my Last Stand button to use when I have to take him again. Of course it wasn't there as that's a Prot talent.

We traded Gluth back and forth a couple of times. For the first time in my life, I was happy for all that 'wasted' stamina on Warrior DPS gear. Somehow the healers were able to keep me up when I had Gluth and we downed him.

I received quite a few tells from people communicating how impressed they were with what I did. One of which I think was a compliment but is not suitable for printing. Getting those comments was sure nice, but what really felt good was knowing I had saved the day, and saved the raid from wiping.

We got Mr. DC back and went on to Thaddius. First try we lost too many to not getting the polarity switch right. It stunned me that people still mess that up. This is not exactly a new fight.
Our second attempt, Mr. DC goes down fighting Stalaag. So I popped into Defense Stance and picked him up. I ended up dying, but Stalaag died at the same time. I had given the raid at least a shot at Thaddius.

We missed the Enrage timer by only a couple of percent. Unfortunately, it was getting late and the raid fell apart.

If we had made another attempt, I was going to whisper Dots (my friend who got me invited) and tell him I was going in Prot Spec/Prot Gear and would just Prot 'DPS'. This had been two fights in a row where I had been needed to step in and tank. I was dang well going to be ready if needed again.

This is one of the really frustrating things about being a tank.

As DPS, you can clearly show that you are better, you just go out and dominate the meters.

As a Healer, it's a little harder, but there are more of you so you can help cover a little bit more. Meters don't tell the whole story, but you can pretty much show yourself.

Tanking is different. You need permission to tank. You need to be assigned.

The other Prot Warriors are really cool guys. I'm struggling with how to express this next part.

You've got one tank so fresh to 80 that he's still sporting T5 gear and another so laggy he can hardly function. But if I had tried to 'outtank' either guy, all it would have accomplished would have been to cause drama and probably I would have gotten myself kicked from the raid.

Regardless if I feel like I was a better choice (even my Naxx10 gear) and regardless if I felt like I could probably handle, ultimately that didn't matter.

I was guest in this raid. I was there at the invitation of a couple of friends from my Mal Katai days. I certainly wasn't going to embarrass them by causing a scene and asking to replace one of their tanks.

It'sssssssss BACON!!!

Since we had done a 25 man on Tuesday, we started with a fresh 10 man on Thursday.

The run was fairly unremarkable except for the welcoming back of my old buddy, Baconstrip. Apparently, he's a changed man since he took a leave of absence
When I heard he was coming back to the server, I was very excited, even though I thought for sure he would be going back to Heroes. Heroes Inc was the guild we broke off from to form Unusual Suspects. I was very happy to see that he was actually joining Unusual Suspects and would be part of our raid group.

The run was fairly unremarkable. Flame Leviathan is still being stingy with the Flamewatch Armguards. I can’t tell you how happy I am there are crafted Bracers coming with Patch 3.2. I had worried I would be wearing Hapless Prey all the way to Icecrown.

Of course, I can’t complain too much. The big Fire Truck did offer me a Titanguard on Tuesday.

There are only a few pieces of loot left from Ulduar 10 that I really need: The Bracers, of course, Royal Seal of King Llane off Yogg, and Shiver/Boreal Guard off Hodir Hard. I really want that shield. Tanks and their shields, what can I say.

Then about halfway through the raid, we saw Lakini, our Boomkin extratrodinare, back online. He’s been away from the game while moving. He hasn’t seen any of our Hodir Hard attempts and I bet he’s going to be pretty happy with 50k Starfires.

[Patch 3.2] I Feel Diminished

Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%. In addition, the benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level. Source)

This news actually came out about a week ago. I wanted to let some time pass before I commented on it because initially I was just mad and that is rarely a good state of mind for a reasoned analysis of a change.

So what does this change actually mean? For a Level 80 tank, diminishing returns start to kick in at 2400 Block Value (80*30). Block Value caps at 2760. Every point of Block Value you get from 2400 to 2760 contributes less and less. For instance, let’s say you’ve got 2400 Block Value exactly. You get an ‘upgrade’ in Tier 9 that increases you Block Value by 80 over the old piece of gear. Your Block Value will not go up by 80 for the purpose of figuring out Shield of Righteousness damage. You will only see your Shield of Rigtheousness hit increase by, I’m guessing at the actual number but something less than 80 let’s say 60.

The bottom line is that your Shield of Righteousness goes from doing 3621 per hit to 3681 per hit.

Your Block Value will go up by 80 for determining how much damage you take off a Blocked hit.

So when you block instead of seeing

Auriaya hits Honorshammer for 13794 (2400 Blocked)

You get

Auriaya hits Honorshammer for 13718 (2480 Blocked)

Your new 80 Block Value item gave you only 60 points for offensive block value, but the full 80 for defensive block value.

Are we likely to start hitting the Diminishing Return on Block Value in anything but a gimmick Block Value set?

A Paladin with his 4 piece Tier 8 set bonus and a Libram of Obstruction is getting pretty close to the diminishing return point. I’m less than 200 Block Value away myself.

I must be using Block gear and gimping my stats, right?

Well, you see, this screenshot was taken in my ‘Boss’ tanking set. That set has exactly 3 pieces with Block Value on them: T8 Shoulders, Gloves and my Bracers of Hapless Prey. I’ve been trying to replace my Bracers for a long time, and just have been unlucky with drops. I’m very excited there’s a new BoE Blacksmithing plan for tanking Bracers next patch.

Both T8 are an upgrade (albeit a minor one) over the Naxx25 Tier 7 pieces in those slots. So 2236 Block Value was achieved without a crazy block value set.

But this change won’t happen until Patch 3.2, that’s the real context to look at it in. At that point (barring additional PTR changes) my Libram of Obstruction will have 100% uptime and my T8 4 piece bonus will have double its current uptime. That means I’ll be sitting at 2236 Block Value more often than I am in 3.1.

Furthermore, in 3.2, I’ll be chasing after my T9 set pieces. Unless I’ve done my math wrong, T9 has more Block Value on it than T8. It also has more Strength, which will further increase our Block Value towards the cap.

The theorycrafting geniuses on MainTankadin have been crunching the numbers and I’d like to share their findings with you.

• The change to ShoR means that BV is much more limited as a threat stat.
• Point-for-point, STR > Hit > Expertise, and everything else sucks.
• In terms of itemization and ipoint allocation, the best way to analyze it is to split it into three regions:
• If your raid-buffed BV is <2500> BV > Hit > Expertise > AP
• If your raid-buffed BV is > 2500 but <2950> Hit > Expertise > AP, with BV rapidly declining in value
• If your raid-buffed BV is > 2950 Hit > STR > Expertise > AP, and BV is worthless for threat
• Block Value from gear is probably not worth considering as a threat stat for much longer, as we'll start hitting the diminishing returns region just due to the STR on our gear very soon.
• Hit and Expertise are both solid threat stats, and these changes especially encourage us to start gearing for the hit cap and expertise soft-cap.

Steelbroken

We put our two raid teams together again Tuesday night and went after Ulduar.

Flame Leviathan

It seemed quite a few people were interested in driving Siege Vehicles, so I grabbed a Motorcycle for this fight. One of the other motorcycle drivers was Donk from our 10 man. He loves riding the motorcycle and has done the role many times. I basically just shadowed him and tried to do what he did.

We never launched anyone up and Flame Leviathan was dead in less than two minutes. I didn’t loot the body. This robot has not been kind to me on either 10 or 25 man. I was going to save myself the disappointment. I had not reacted well the night before when Hodir Hard didn't drop either Shiver or Boreal Guard. I wasn't going to repeat that by complaining about Flame Leviathan's loot.

Then over vent someone said “ooo, Titanguard”. I figured they were just playing with me. But Ellevis linked it and the other totally inconsequential things that dropped.

We had a couple of guests from Heroes Inc again. I won’t call them PuGs. Not all that long ago we all wore the same guild tag, it’s not like they were strangers. Most of us are still friends. Because of the guests, the same loot rules from last week were in effect. One main spec ‘win’.

I had no problem with using my one epic of the night on Titanguard.

Razorscale

Next up was Razorscale, and I had a little miscommunication with my Raid Leader. I was to take the left side, so I went to where I normally do in our 10 mans. The problem is that the ‘left’ in 10 man is really the ‘center’ in 25 mans. Despite my error, we got the pulls under control.

In Monday night’s 10 man run I had made the mistake of turning Razorscale towards the raid. So instead of kiting him in a circle, we kited him backwards. This worked well but I ended up making two mistakes. I held him too long which put my stacks too high, and kited out of range of my healers. Clean up on Aisle 7, dead Paladin!

Perplexity taunted him and they finished him off.

Ignis

This was not a banner night for my tanking skills. On Ignis trash something really weird happened with my UI. My mob was marked with a Star but when I targeted him, the mob showed a Moon as it’s symbol. I thought I had targeted the wrong mob and started looking in vain for Star. Well Star is our first kill target, so while I’m frantically trying to find the mob I just had targeted, DPS pulls him off and it gets messy. Ellevis came to the rescue and taunted Star. We lost some people that pull but didn’t wipe the raid. Ellevis tanked the next couple of pulls while I did a /reloadui which seemed to fix the issue.

We used the same setup for Ignis we had last week with Perplexity on Ignis and Ellevis and myself on Adds. I had a really tough time keeping my Add in the fire long enough to ‘cook’ him. The only tool I have is Hammer of Justice. It doesn’t last long enough to get them fully cooked. My only option was to tank them in the fire. Now that I think about I should Hammer of Justice them, and then just as it’s wearing off, fire off an Avenger’s Shield for the Daze. That might keep them in the fire long enough to get Molten.

Ellevis, being a Death Knight had Chains of Ice. If I was on my Warrior, I would have had Hamstring, Concussion Blow and Charge. I don’t know how Druids handle it, maybe shift and root?

I did pick up on a little trick that really helped me find the new add that Ignis would activate. Before he activates his next add, he will yell: “Arise! Soldiers of the Iron Crucible!” Right after he yells, he fires a yellow bolt into the air. If you follow that bolt, it will land directly on the new add he is going to spawn.

It took a couple of tries, but we killed him. I felt like I got better at Add management each attempt.

He dropped some Tanking boots which Ellevis won. That made me feel better about winning the Orbs for Spiked Death Dealers over him. Those still sound like they should be DPS boots.

XT-002

I was tagged to tank XT again. We downed him pretty easily and even got the Heroic: Nerf Engineering achievement. I never felt the least bit in danger while tanking him. We had multiple Paladins with Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian which really helped out on the Tantrums.

One of my guildies from the other Raid Team ran into a case of ‘wrong alt’. He was on his Paladin instead of his Hunter, and XT dropped a ‘Hunter’ staff. This would help explain what happened on Kologarn.

Kologarn

Perplexity and I traded off Kologarn when either of us got about 2 stacks. Ellevis handled the rubble. There’s plenty of damage from Kologarns Shockwave attack to keep your mana going, even if you aren’t the one tanking at that moment. He’s tauntable so tank switches were pretty simple. Ellevis directed the DPS from the Arm to the Body and then when we got close to the other Arm.

Any Hunters out there may have already guessed what happened next. Kologarn drops the Gun. The Hunter playing his Paladin promptly jumps off the Ledge.

We only had one Hunter in the Raid, Taxiderm, and he had already burned his ‘one epic’ on the staff. Apparently, this Gun is the best thing going for Hunter weapons right now. Taxi had to let it go to free roll, but none of the DPS Warriors, and Rogues rolled against him. I was quite impressed with our group after that.

Iron Council

After Kologarn, we doubled back to Iron Council. If you remember from last week, Iron Council had been our road block.

The thing I like best about Iron Council is it’s a 3 tank fight. We put Ellevis on Steelbreaker, myself on Runemaster and Perplexity and a Rogue on Stormcaller. Thou shalt be interrupted, Brundhir!

Our problem last week was that we simply couldn’t keep a tank up under Fusion Punch. Not me, nor Perp, nor Ellevis. It was quite a relief when Ellevis made it through the first, then second, then third Fusion Punch.

Then just before Steelbreaker died, I went down to Runemaster. It was just a normal 32k melee swing. Recount’s Death Meter showed that I was just under that. This was yet another case of an Ardent Defender leapfrog!

3.2! 3.2! Where for art thou, 3.2!

Perp was able to taunt Runemaster while Ellevis and the Raid finished the last couple of percent off Steelbreaker. For the first time, our group had gotten Steelbreaker down.

But we weren’t out of the woods yet. Ellevis came over and taunted Runemaster, but we lost our Rogue interrupter. People moved out of Runes of Death, but healing was really intense.

We got Runemaster down. Now it was just Brundhir. His first Lightning Whirl nearly took us out prompting Ellevis to say something to the effect of “yeah, that’s what needs to be interrupted” over vent.

I was raised as a Ghoul for the first time in Wrath. It took a moment to familiarize myself with the controls and soon I was banging away at Brundhir.

Somehow Iron Council went from road block to one shot. I don’t know what the healing team did to figure out how to get Ellevis through Fusion Punch, I’m just glad they did.

Cat Woman

We had a very little time left, so we decide to try Auryia. I was assigned one of the cats, and got ready to taunt once they were aggroed and coming up the stairs.

First pull went something like Pull, Dead Tank, Wipe, all in about a half a second. The next pull went about as well. We ended up just putting Guardian Spirit on Perplexity right before we pulled. That got us through the initial pull, but we were wiped out by the first Sonic Boom she does.

At that point it was getting late, so we called the raid. I wish I had done a better job with my tanking, but it had been a really good night, and we had a new Boss kill under our belts.

If we keep killing bosses in Ulduar 25, we are going to lose our 10 Man Strict Ranking, simply because we won't qualify as a 10 man Strict guild anymore. If we are killing 25 man Bosses, I guess we really aren't a 10 man Only Guild.

That doesn't really both me. Sure, it's nice to look at GuildOx and see Realm #1 for 10 man Strict. That's cool and all, but it's ultimately not that important. I don't care if we were the first or fortieth guild on our server to kill to Iron Council. It was a fun night.

Speaking Another Language

My guild did an “Alt Naxx10” run over the weekend. I was going on my Warrior since I had burned my Hunter in a Naxx10 pug earlier.

We needed an offtank, but my Warrior just wasn’t ready. He was sitting at around 515 Defense, so I went in as DPS. My DPS wasn’t steller. People joke that I’m all Greens and an Ironsoul. That isn’t far from the truth, but I am in mostly Blues, not Greens!

Depending on the fight I did about 1.7k to 1.8k. That’s right about what Hammer was doing at that gear level.

We knocked out Spider, Plague and Construct without much problem.

I was the only Plate wearer who needed any gear from Naxx10 the first night. Our Tanks were a Death Knight and Protection Paladin. Both were geared past anything that Naxx10 could give them. I came away with a new Back, a Ring, two new chests, and a Shield.

I was fighting that old ‘upgrades take me below the crit cap’ battle that I fought (and honestly still fight) on Honorshammer.

It had really bothered me that I wasn’t able to offtank for the group, and I was determined to do what I could to rectify that.

After the Raid, I went to my Bank and pulled out some mats and got some new Bracers made. Then I grabbed some new Shoulders and a new Belt off the Auction House. I got everything gemmed up and enchanted, except for my Bracers because I kept debating on having Honorshammer buy the Badge ones and send them to my Warrior. I got him up to 537 Defense, and logged off.

The second night rolled around and lo and behold, we have no Tanks. So my Warrior gets tagged along with Blue’s alt Warrior. Blue’s Warrior was much better geared than I was so he took the Maintank role and I took the offtank.

The best way I could describe my experiences of tanking on a Protection Warrior versus tanking on my Protection Paladin was that I felt like I was trying to learn a new language. My brain knew what I needed to do, but I wasn’t always sure how to translate that into the game.

My Paladin just comes so naturally to me. I’ve been tanking on my Paladin for over 2 years and my Warrior for about 2 months. I know what needs to be done and exactly how I’m going to get it done. I have to ‘think’ much more on my Warrior, and I made all kind of mistakes like missing Sword and Board procs.

I would liken my Paladin to a sharp switchblade, but the Warrior to one of those utility knives with 80 attachments that slices, dices and makes thousands of julienne fries! You get the feeling that the Warrior has a larger toolkit. Some of that has to do with the fact that many tools on the Paladin are passive, silently working in the background. For example, I don’t have to Thunderclap on my Paladin, it’s built into Judgment.

The skill I missed the most from my Paladin was Avenger’s Shield. Not only is it a fun skill, but it gives you good initial threat on 3 mobs. I felt much less comfortable in multi-target situations overall than I did in single target situations. Back in Burning Crusade, I had really given Warriors a hard time about not wanting to tank Heroic Shattered Halls. After last night, I sort of felt bad about that.

The entire raid really missed not having a Paladin of any spec for Blessings. We had Battle Shout to cover Might and a Mana Spring to cover Wisdom, but everybody including myself, wanted Kings.

I absolutely loved having a real interrupt. I know we have Hammer of Justice for Paladins, but it’s locked out by the Global Cooldown, while Shield Bash isn’t. Warbringer is still a ton of fun and Vene’s Warbringer macro is nothing short of genius.

Sword and Board is a lot of fun, and I’d love to have something like that added to the Paladin arsenal.

I really like Shields. I need to level up my Druid at some point, but using a Shield to tank just feels right to me. My favorite sound effect in the game is the THUD of a Blocked Hit.

I came to the conclusion I prefer the Mana mechanic to the Rage mechanic. I really like starting the fight with a fuel resource bar. With all the mana regen techniques Paladin have, it’s not like I can run out of mana even with 1/2 Spiritual Attunement. It’s only on certain corner cases like Vezzax that I hate mana because it seems like Blizzard didn’t balance the encounter for Paladin tanks. The vast majority of Paladin Tanks I talked to on Maintankadin corroborate that even with 2/2 Spiritual Attunement, Vezax can run you dry.

Of course the most important characteristic of any toon you play is how fun they are. All three of my 80s are fun. I enjoy playing them. I prefer my Paladin and my Warrior over my Hunter but I think that’s because I like Tanking, and it’s kind of tough to do that on my Hunter.

Trash

Trash went pretty well, Blue’s Warrior grabbed more than I did usually. We had two DPS in the raid that were ‘mains’ and we had a devil of time keeping threat off them. One of the guys is a really skilled mage who I struggle to hold aggro against even on Honorshammer. I usually took the whirlwind guy and kept him locked down with Concussion Blows, and Shockwaves.

Instructor Raz

Since this is a vehicle fight for the tank, there was no difference at all.

Gothik

Avenger’s Shield, how I missed thee. I was assigned to Live side, while Blue took Dead side. The first couple of pulls were okay, but the fight got progressively more hetic. We were saved more by our Healers keeping the DPS alive, and DPS killing the spawned mobs quickly than any tanking I did. Heroic Throw has a LONG cooldown, Shattering Throw’s is even longer.

Gothik himself was more fun. I enjoyed being able to Spell Reflect his Shadow Bolts back at him. We opened the gates on Blue’s side and killed him there.

4 Horsemen

Honestly, the fight didn’t feel any different on my Warrior than it had when I was comparably geared on my Paladin.

They dropped the danged Thane’s Tainted Great Helm. This never dropped one time for Honorshammer in all the times he ran Naxx10. I could only laugh. The RNG is indeed a cruel mistress. Since Blue’s Warrior wasn’t there the first night and I had already gotten 5 Epics from the run, I didn’t roll against him on the Helm.

Kind of offtopic, but lately I noticed something with loot I never noticed in Burning Crusade. When I win something, there’s this feeling of empathy for the person I beat out. I’m happy for the loot, but I also feel bad for the person I beat out. This most recently happened when I won the Runed Orbs to make my Spiked Death Dealers over Ellevis. The fact that Ellevis was the Blacksmith with the pattern, only added to it.

On the flip side, I’m more genuinely happy when someone I’m tanking with gets loot. There was a genuine feeling of happiness for Blue’s Warrior when he won that helm. I always congratulated people, even in Burning Crusade, but the emotion is more there now if that makes any sense.

Sapphiron

Blue’s Warrior tanked him and I switched to my Arms spec.

Kel’ Thuzad

Blue and I talked about who was going to do what on the fight. While Blue’s Warrior clearly outgeared me (he has about 5k more buffed HP), I had far more experience. We decided I would pick up the Adds and he would take KT.

We struggled with KT for a while. We’d lose people to Ice Blocks, and Void Zones. Every person in that raid had one shot this fight numerous times. We were all figuring it out again on new toons and new roles. Our regular Death Knight Main Tank was playing a Resto Druid. Our normal Holy Paladin was throwing out Chaos Bolts on his Warlock.

It must have been about our 4th or 5th pull, but we lost Blue’s Warrior. The Adds weren’t up yet so I charged in and taunted. I absolutely love that skill (Charge) on my Warrior.

Of course, I would now have to pick up the Bugs as well as tank KT. I picked up the first one with Heroic Throw and taunted the second one. I had to get Jag to Soul Shatter, Fumiko had to Feign Death and was waiting to pull my Hodir trick with Donk. The ‘Hodir trick’ is when I wait for Donk to pull aggro off my Paladin and then taunt right away.

I rotated my trinkets with Shield Block on cooldown to try to limit how much the bugs were hitting me for. I rotated Shield Wall and Last Stand. I interrupted and spell reflected.

Then KT hit me with a Void Zone which was really hard to see in all the mess of KT and the two bugs. I moved just in the nick of time.

KT finally died. Our Disc Priest even told me in a whisper that healing me wasn’t that rough.

After the fight I realized that I don’t think I ever tanked KT himself on Honorshammer. I was always on Bug duty. Nothing wrong with that as I always had plenty of other Main Tank duties in Naxx including Sapphiron nearly every week.

It was really cool to do some raid tanking on my Warrior. It was a blast.

By the way, please don’t kill me in the comments, but I just realized my Warrior only has two of his Major Glyph slots filled. Sorry he’s an alt, and I overlooked that.

[Patch 3.2] Avoidance Nerf

There’s a change on the PTR that I haven’t mentioned yet. I wasn’t sure I understood it, and I certainly didn’t understand what it would mean.

Let’s get to the change:

(image from http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/)

Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.

Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced
by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

The Developers noticed that every tank was going for Dodge over Parry. Parry get penalized because it has a positive side effect. When you parry a Boss’ attack, you swing faster next time theoretically making Parry a ‘threat’ and ‘avoidance’ statck. Don’t confuse this with parry-hasting where YOUR attack gets parried and the Boss hits you faster causing an increase in damage taken.

Boss swings, you parries, you attack faster is what we are talking about.

The Developers simply overestimated how much of an extra benefit this was. Tanks didn’t care, they just wanted avoidance and flocked to Dodge.

So now the two are equal, but parry still punished harder by Diminishing Returns.

The theorycrafters at both Tank Spot and Main Tankadin went to work. MathLab simulations were written and spreadsheets were produced. If you are mathmathically inclined you might enjoy reading the threads: MainTankadin, Tankspot

I love that there are people who are without question much smarter than me.

So what is the bottom line of this change? How should it change the way you look at your gear?

The answer will be different for every person, but let me give you a couple of approaches.

First from Theck:

• Take current ratings and subtract out 689 def, 96 dodge, and 64 parry
• Figure out your current ratio of dodge:def:parry
• if one of these is higher than the ideal ratio of 2.4:1.8:1, swap out some of the rating that's above the target ratio for a rating that's below or at the target value.
• Recalculate and lather, rinse, repeat.

So let’s look at ole Honorshammer. Papa got a new pair of shoes last night thanks to some deft rolling and some kindness by our Elemental Shaman who would have surely outrolled me.

Defense: 701 – 689 = 12
Dodge: 519 – 96 = 423
Parry: 314 – 64 = 250

That gives me a ratio of 1.7:.04:1

Basically, this means I need a ton more Defense, and less Parry in order to have the most efficient use of my Avoidance stats.

Another way to distill this down to ‘what does it mean to me’ is to look at the advice from Xenix. He was leading the Tankspot thread and is another of these math geniuses.

1. Stack defense rating until you reach a number that has a minimum of wasted in the defense rating -> defense conversion. (728,787,846,910 and 969 are the best possible ones to hit).
2. Stack dodge/parry rating from there so that the post-DR portions of your Dodge% and Parry% are in a 1.875:1 ratio
3. If your total dodge+parry rating is getting anywhere near your defense rating, try to hit the next good number of defense rating (while adjusting your dodge/parry rating to maintain #2) as the diminishing returns on miss will be such that you will notice a slight difference.
4. If you can't hit the next good number of defense rating, don't worry - keep stacking dodge/parry in the aforementioned ratio and you'll be fine.

So by Xenix’s advice, I haven’t even done Step 1 yet. I need about 27 more Defense Rating to get there. That also lines up with Theck’s advice that I need more Defense.

My Dodge/Parry are actually pretty close with a ratio of 1.7.

I don’t have any parry gems, or enchants so it will be basically impossible to reduce the amount of parry I have. I’m already enchanting for Defense where it’s available on my Shield, and Back. I’m already using Enduring (Def/Stam) gems in my yellow slots.

The bottom line is that my avoidance isn’t ideal or efficient, but I really don’t see any way I could change it at this point.

EDIT: The Math Genuses continued their work and added this important detail.

• At low gear levels ( defense rating + dodge rating + parry rating
• At higher gear levels (defense + dodge + parry > 1150 rating), gear so that your post-DR dodge and parry percentages come out as close to a 1.88:1 ratio as possible. In other words:
  (character_sheet_dodge_% - 11.65) / (character_sheet_parry_% - 10) = 1.88

Hammer is definately at the 'higher gear levels' with a dodge,defense, and parry of around 1500.

His character sheet dodge % is 26.34%. His character sheet parry is 19.95%. That gives him a ratio of about 1.48. So either more Dodge or less Parry would get him closer to the 1.88 ratio. The advantage to this approach is you use your character sheet percentages which will already include contributions from Defense. Most of my Reds are filled with prismatic stamina gems which I will probably have to change to red Dodge/Stam gems in 3.2 and replace three of my blue stam gems with the JC gems.

Me and 24 of My Best Friends

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my guild, Unusual Suspects, had absorbed a second 10 man raiding group from one of the other guilds from our server. The new group is led by a Death Knight named Perplexity, so I call them Perp’s group. My group, well, I just call that my group, lol.

Both groups continued to concentrate on 10-man raiding, but we knew that having the new group would allow us to do the occasional 25 man raid.

I was very excited when I saw the 25 man Ulduar raid on the in game Calendar for Tuesday night. Before the raid, I finally told myself to stop over thinking everything and just bought the Shard of the Crystal Forest for 19 Emblems of Conquest. I’ll be swimming in those things soon enough (3.2).

We were a couple of people short but we were able to fill out the raid with people from my old guild, called Heroes Inc. So we had our 25 man raid ready to go. Ellevis, the Death Knight who runs my raid group, was handling the raid leader responsibilities. Some of the people from the Perp’s group had never raided with him. No one knew what to expect. No one knew how far we’d get.

To make sure we were fair to the guys from Heroes, we made loot just a /roll for your main spec, and one epic for the night. Our main goal was to give all 25 man people a shot at something from a boss. To be honest, I was just excited to be in a 25 man Ulduar. Sure, I wouldn’t have minded winning an item, but it wasn’t a big concern.

We start, of course, with Flame Leviathan. Much to my surprise, there were 5 Siege Tanks to drive. I guess I should have known there would be more vehicles in 25-man.

The fight through the Iron Dwarf Army feels different with all those Sieges, Choppers, and Demonlishers. It really felt like we were army on the assault.

Someone joked that we should take this force to Wintergrasp, to which someone else replied that we would still lose. (Wintergrasp is officially a Horde area on my server that they occasionally let us have.)

I was in my familiar position of driving a Siege. Yes, even on a vehicle fight, I'm a tank.

We didn’t leave any towers up, so we burned through the trash pretty quick. Next thing you know were facing down the Fire Truck. We didn’t launch anyone up onto Flame Leviathan. Instead we kept the Demo Gunners firmly in their seats and they blasted away at the pyrite hanging over the area. The Demos stacked pyrite on Flame Leviathan and he was melting pretty quickly. He never picked me to pursue so I just hung out on his ‘six’ and interrupted Flame Vents. I’m happy to say that Flame Vents never got up for more than one second and I wasn’t even the guy who interrupted it sometimes.

Badda boom, badda bing, dead Flame Leviathan.

No Titanguard. I’m sure Rhidach is not surprised. Even on 25-man this robot hates me. He’s never dropped the Tank bracers on 10-man in 11 tries and now he refuses me Titanguard. No big deal, I had a blast fighting him. I just wish he had picked me to pursue.

Now maybe I'm late to the party, but have you ever noticed the nod to Tank Spot when you kill Flame Leviathan? The Marmot is kind of the offical mascot fo Tank Spot.

Next up was Razorscale. I was tanking along with Perplexity (Death Knight) and Ellevis (Death Knight). The fight seemed pretty much the same from 10-man, only Razor hits much harder. Once we got her grounded I picked her up and BAM, dead Paladin. Perp grabbed her and I gotta a Battle Rez. I ran into to relieve him, and turned him right towards the raid. Doh! Then BAM I died again.

Ellevis and Perp were able to finish tanking her. I looked back at my combat log and saw I took a 41k melee hit.
I didn’t have 41k health. When did Razorscale start hitting that hard? I checked and sure enough I was in my Trash set (535 Defense). The only thing I can figure is that I got a crit but Recount reported it as a hit.

One of the healers was kind enough to apologize for letting me die. I corrected her (female toon, no idea if the actual player is a she), and let her know it was my fault.

With Flame Leviathan and Razor down, we decided to try our hand at XT-002. Ellevis was kind enough to put me on XT while he and Purp took care of the Assault Bots. Fully buffed, I was sitting at just shy of 42k health. XT was hitting me for 17k to 21k. I had about 1400 Block Value without the Libram of Obstruction up.
My healers did a fantastic job, and I only felt threatened one time where I used Divine Protection (Paladin’s equivalent to Shield Wall). Before you knew it, we were ‘bad, bad toys’. The first piece of Tanking loot dropped from XT, The Signet of the Earthshaker. I looked at my rings, Sand Worn Band and Signet of Winter. I really didn’t enjoy the prospect of trading Parry and Dodge for Block Value and useless Block Rating. I didn’t roll on it. I told Ellevis that I could use it, but I wasn’t going to make that my one epic for the night. One of the other Paladins in the raid was willing to make that his one epic, so it went to him. He’ll probably get more use out it than I would have.

Everyone was feeling really good. Morale was high and we started to wonder just how far we could get.

We set our sights on Ignis. This time Perplexity was on the Boss, and I was going to help Ellevis round up the Adds. I had never done that particular task before. In our 10-man group, Ellevis has me on Ignis. It took me a little while to figure it out. At first, I tried to have the Construct in the fire and myself just outside. I kept looking for a debuff to see how hot the Construct was. It actually appears as a buff. They don’t debuff until you pull them into the water. My Hammer of Justice stun wasn’t quite long enough to keep the Construct in and get fully cooked so I did a bit of kiting.

Our main problem that attempt was actually Slag Pot healing. The healers worked something out and we pulled again. I did a little better, but Ellevis picked up most of the Adds. That dude is really good Tank, let me tell you.

We downed Ignis that attempt and completed the first ‘wing’ of Ulduar25.We moved down to the Antechamber, and decided to try to AoE tank the first trash pull. That worked not so well. Sheeps were in order and soon enough we acquainted ourselves with Kologarn. Perp was tanking and I was stayed on Kologarn to relieve Perp if he had a bad avoidance streak and got the Crunch Armor debuff too high. We ended up trading Kologarn back and forth a couple of times. This was my first time team tanking with Perp, and I think it worked out pretty well.

I really hadn’t studied the loot tables past Flame Leviathan so I don’t know what didn’t drop. In a way I like it better that way. I’ll be surprised and happy when something I can use drops, but I will have to make a quick decision about what is and isn’t an upgrade.

After Kologarn made a bridge for us, we had a choice between Iron Council and Auryia. Ellevis decided on Iron Council.

I was Steelbreaker. Ellevis was on Stormcaller and Perp took Runemaster.

First attempt, I was too slow moving Steelbreaker out of a Rune of Power and we wiped. I acknowledged the mistake and apologized over vent.

We pulled again. I moved Steelbreaker faster this time but still got killed to a combination of melee plus Fusion Punch. Good gravy, that thing HURTS on 25-man.

We tried again, but I was killed by a Fusion Punch, plus melee again.

Ellevis decided to move me to Runemaster and Perplexity to Steelbreaker. As we gather back up to buff up again, I heard something over vent that nearly ruined the night.

Basically someone said “Paladin FAIL!”

It was like someone had flipped a switch inside me. Hate and fire started to rise up from my inner being. You are NOT going to blame this wipe on me being a Paladin. Oh, no sir!

But suddenly something I had read once in a good book started playing over and over in my head. I won’t say it was a voice, more like when a song starts randomly playing in your mind. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” So I decided to heed that advice and listened. This person WASN’T talking about my tanking. One of our Holys had left Crusader Aura on. That was the “Paladin FAIL”!

The best part is that I never said anything, so I was able to laugh along with everyone else as the Holy Paladin changed his aura. No one knew (until I wrote this blog) how close I came to embarrassing myself in front of my new friends in Perp’s group.

We pulled and I started banging away at Rune Master. But we lost Perp to a Fusion Punch.

We would try twice more with Perplexity and even once or twice with Ellevis. We always lost the tank to a Fusion Punch.

I have to admit that part of me was glad it wasn’t just me. We couldn’t keep any tank up. But I was saddened because it would have been cool to get Iron Council down, regardless of who was tanking what.

I was really wishing for the buffs to Paladin tanks in 3.2. That first attempt might have been okay if I had had the 3.2 version of Ardent Defender.

It was getting late, so we had to call it. The night ended at Iron Council with 5 Bosses dead.

I had an absolute blast.