Saturday, May 24, 2008

How to tell armor class


Just a random thought that came to me this weekend. Sorry for the sad lulz

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

I think I broke it

Now for a while I have felt that I have reached a stagnant point in terms of gear progression and for me that means that I am not improving. My tanking gear has always been fully enchanted and gemmed for optimal tanking stats and I have one of the best threat generation amongst the tanks that I know, but the experience against Void Reaver where the off tanks were unable to build enough threat leaving me to single tank him made me realize that a bit more threat generation would have gone a long way to prevent me the repair bill. But currently my gear is at the most optimal for my current progression level. Why...ok let me break it down

1) Head : Stag Helm of Malrone: Sure its not the best tanking headpiece but it means I have the 2-set bonus from Tier 4 which most would recall is frikkin awesome.
2) Neck: Necklace of the Juggernaut: This BoJ reward neck piece is possibly one of the best barring the ones which drop in end T5-T6 raids.
3) Shoulders: Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders: Now this is necessary for me because I use Resilience to hit my uncrittability mark and 2 piece bonus means another +35 resilience so irreplacable except with S2 or S3 pieces.
4) Back: Gilded Thorium Cloak: Definitely one of the best in game cloaks for druids with the exception of the BoJ cloak.
5) Chest: Vengeful Gladiator's Dragonhide Tunic: The 2nd piece of pvp gear for my 2-pc bonus. Its in many ways comparable to the Malrone's chestpiece (T4) and in some ways better with the huge amount of stamina on it.
6) Bracers: Band of the swift paw: Definitely one of the best in game with the exception of T6
7) Belt: Waistguard of the Great beast: Now the reason I prefer this belt to the more oft used Belt of Natural power is its relative ease of obtaining it coupled with the hit rating which is sorely missing on bear tanking gear. I also prefer the added agility on it.
8) Leggings: Tameless Breeches: This is one fantastic pair of leggings and can only be outclassed by stuff that drops in Sunwell.
9) Boots: Vindicator's Dragonhide Boots: Fairly balanced stats and with the resilience it gives me the option of losing some defence in case of need.
10) Rings and Trinkets: I currently have the 2 best rings in-game for a druid tank along with 2 of the best trinkets (arguably) making them both irreplacable.

So that leaves me at an artificial ceiling in terms of improvements unless I finally succumb to using macros in lieu of click tanking. Now I like to have a comfortable time tanking without any fear of losing threat to those pesky locks. However my current guild has a couple of extremely well geared locks and by extremely I mean the kind that generate threat in the 900-1100 tps range kinda locks and thats with Salvation. Now under ideal conditions I can put upwards of 1300-1400 tps but as we know conditions arent always ideal and I have had times when the threat of the locks has come close to the point that I have had to put my taunt button ready in case the locks push above me so that I can gain snap aggro.

Now the locks also do this to toy with me since I kinda pride in my threat generation and as a result am always the first dps target tank because of it. So seeing that I am at a ceiling while the dps keeps getting geared had me worried and finally forcing me into doing the thing I hate most....theorycrafting. I finally downloaded Rawr and did some testing with a possible change in spec and last night blew a 110 BoJ and will possibly blow some more for epic gems.

So what did I buy:
1) Cloak: Slikk's Cloak of Placation: More dodge, more stamina (slightly less armor) for increased survivability which my following changes will need.
2) Gloves: Handwraps of the aggressor: These gloves not only have higher stamina but also more agility, strength and haste, making it a higher dps pair of gloves. The haste is a double edged sword for a tank, since it increases the attack speed and as a result it also increases the number of parries and as a result more attacks in the same time period and more incoming damage. Be sure that your healers are capable of handling this change, even though its a minor change but I already have haste on my leggings so this is slowly adding up.

But now I have broken the coveted 2pcT4 bonus making the continued use of the head gear only a waste. So how did I correct that change. I equipped the Grimgrin faceguard. Now this is a questionable tanking helm for a druid, it has a lot of agility and stamina so increases survivability but at a loss of some serious armor. It also has a fairly serious dose of AP and hit making it even more of a threat generator.

So after getting these I socketed them with Solid Stars of Elune for all, and enchanted them exactly the same way they were before. So where do I stand with these changes (in dire bear form unbuffed):
Stamina: 18.7k (gained around 1k HP)
Armor: 30.5k (lost 1k armor)
Dodge: 39+ (gained 2% dodge)
Hit: 54 (gained 24)

and a bit more of stats in other places. RAWR showed that my overall threat generation is up and so is my threat ceiling in an unlimited rage situation. Now to test out how these changes work out and report them in the future to see whether breaking the set bonus was any good.

Until then adios.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Hunter madness

Also some updates on my hunter. Hes grown up into a fine dps machine and is currently roaming outlands as a level 64. On hitting outlands his levelling was minorly halted due to the fact that Thrallmar rep has a pretty sweet bow as a rep reward at exalted, not to mention a very fine Polearm as well. Its a combination of these that I just ran some quests which had hunter gear and left the others to pursue instancing. It got me pretty far and I'm almost half way through honored with Thrallmar and there are still quite a few quests to go.

He's also quite a ways through honored with Cenarion Expedition for their arrows as well as their glyph and followed the routine of using unidentified plant parts and the follow up chain quests to get him most of the way there. I used the rep to buy myself the arrows from friendly rep and also the warden's haubrek.

In the meanwhile I was also collecting Marks of Thrallmar for the delectable Mark of Conquest which I now have. Many a level 70s stomped on me while I worked hard in getting them but it was worth it. On a side note, one level 70 pissed me off enough for me to bring my main and scare him the hell away forever.(Level 70s picking on anyone less than 2 levels below them, unless provoked, is bad form.)

Its also something worthwhile to note that during a Slave Pens run with a level 70 warlock, I outdpsed him(me being level 62 then) by putting out a combined dps of over 540, which needless to say pleasantly surprised me. I must say that Steady Shot greatly increases your dps and simultaneously your threat generation because since I got it, I have pulled aggro of Apollo more often than it should happen.

Currently I am at over 1100AP and around 15% crit(200+dps). My pet has about 5k HP, 8k armor and 130+dps. My raiding guild's hunter class lead has challenged me that I will never outdps his hunter and in the rare event that I do he will owe me 500g. Hopefully with the plethora of advice available online.....he shall pay(BRK don't let me down).

Anyway that's all the updates I have on the youngling....in time he too shall see more of the end game.

Add to my list another success

So Monday, I log onto Argonaut and start prepping for our raid, which is one I rarely attend since it conflicts with my other RL engagements. Anyway I log on, get a raid invite and see that we have 20 guild people for the raid and only 2 tanks.....so we pull a couple more from people's friends list and decide on doing VR (post buff and pre re-nerf). Now the guild's main warrior tank hadn't logged in...fine, nor had any of the other well geared tanks....ummm

Me: "We still running this place with just one decently geared tank and 2 Kara and blues/green geared tanks?"

GL: "Yup"

Me: "....."


So we go in, clear the trash, this being my first time ever main tanking in TK was fun. We only wiped once on trash because one of the tanks didn't heed my call to move his target away from the group which led to them being tossed outside into the path of another group.....wipefest ensued. So we move on, clear all the way there, no more wipes. Now our guild has never downed Void Reaver...ever, we once made a couple of attempts on him post buff but people weren't paying attention to the orbs and as a result dying. So the GL made a change, all healers stood inside the circle and only the ranged dps stood outside. That was essentially like 12 people. Now 3 tanks, melee dps and the healers were going to take the pounding but atleast they didn't need to worry about the orbs.

Those of you who have attempted VR know that he needs multiple tanks because he does a knockback which reduces threat severely, so this way tanks can rotate threat and not lose it to the dps. I realized this was going to be a problem, but after 5-6 knockbacks I still had threat and the other 2 tanks were unable to get Void Reaver off me, when they finally did they moved Void Reaver outside the circle and doomed the healers to an orb resulting in our first wipe. This was on the whole a bad thing, because the dps were being limited by threat generation. However ridiculous my threat generation is, I don't usually manage to hold threat after my second knockback with my regular tanks. So on our third attempt I chaffed an elixir of major agility, ate some agility food and used a scroll of agility to maximize crit and threat generation. This time around my threat generation was huge, the locks didn't come close until much later, the other tanks got aggro only to lose it to me in seconds and we managed to kill him just a couple of seconds after he hit the enrage. I can tell you hit me hard during enrage(somewhere in the range of 19k) but he couldn't one shot me and that was all the time we needed.

VR down.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Need more rage

And no this isn't a reference to our beloved Ratters....read on.
But first my obligatory excuse for not posting :Tis the bee-sy season for us worker bees(see what I did thar) and this has resulted in me posting less and less. To be honest there hasn't been much to report until recently. But recently some good news has accumulated, beginning with my guild has downed Rage Winterchill (hence the title), and to be honest the guy is a breeze as long as you have a pally tank to help with the waves. We also are at a stage where we are one-shotting the whole of ZA and pushing for the third chest (almost there), and lastly we downed Solarian last night and truly she is an idiot check as Karthis pointed out.

So my current progress stands at:
Kara - FULL
Zul'Aman - FULL
Gruul's Lair - FULL
Magtheridon - FULL
SSC - 2/6 (Lurker and Leo)
TK - 1/4 (Solarian)
Hyjal - 1/5 (Rage Winterchill)
BT - 0 (<---Only a matter of time)

So lets look at the bosses I got
Rage Winterchill:
Personally the guy itself is the easiest boss I have seen, its the waves before him that will test the raid more than he will. So assuming you have a pally tank make him stand right in front of the knights looking towards the direction the waves will come from. Make sure no one stands in front of him at all points of time, because they will aggro the mobs in the wave due to proximity before the tanks. Now all the other tanks stack up near him. As a druid tank you perform the hurricane pull with barkskin, let it go for 2-3 ticks and switch to bear form the moment they get close enough to start hitting you, by now you should have aggroed the majority of the mobs and once near you the Paladin's consecrate will catch the rest of them up. At this point in time all you do is swipe, an occasional demo roar if the warrior isn't doing his job, and watch to make sure no mob goes rogue on your caster groups who will be AoE-ing like there is no tomorrow and the tears swelling up seeing their dps meters will make them incapable of reacting in case of a loose mob, and if one mob goes rogue you or another non-pally tank goes and pulls it back to the group for the AoE to continue.

You do this with all pulls except with the abomination pull, where tanks take one or 2 abominations and pull them aside from the group until they have solid, and by that I mean solid aggro on them, at which point all tanks converge again on the pally tank for the AoE to commence. Healers will need to be solid because the tanks will be dealing with not only the melee damage from the abominations but also the poison aura from all the abominations.This is only an option assuming your healers can heal you through it, else it will need to be single target killing which is slower and can be an issue since the waves are timed and if you aren't done with one wave before the next one comes it could result in serious mana issues.

The necromancers don't involve any tanks since they are sheeped for the most part then single targeted by the raid dpsers resulting in an explosion the kind of which leaves behind only a mushroom cloud.

Note: It is important for mana users to drink/eat after each wave

When the boss finally comes after the 8th wave apparently he can be held off by 3 rogues distracting/vanishing him, but it didn't work too well for us, so we let him come. At this point one tank picks him up and then drags him towards Jaina and her buddies who help in killing him. Now he has only 2 things to worry about. The first and foremost is "Death and decay" which causes damage in a certain area, its in the range of 2.7-3.3k per tick, and the only option is to run out of it. The downside is to see this you need to max your graphics, I relied on DBM to warn me and ran towards raid members who weren't moving at all. As soon as it ends, you feral charge him and continue tanking him near Jaina. His second and more annoying ability is to encase you in ice which causes some serious damage (by serious I mean killer), so there are 2 options, to heal through it or to use your PvP trinket. With our abundance of well geared healers we decided to heal through it.

This fight was to be tanked by a tank less geared than both of the guild main tanks (me and my buddy Tier), since this tank had seen this fight on his healer alt (I don't like to give up my position as main tank but I don't like to argue either so went along with it). Half way through tanking Rage, the tank died and I had enough threat despite being in cat form to immediately pick him up and make Rage eat some dirt.

The rest as we know is now history.

Solarion I shall discuss on another day.

Edit: Can't seem to be able to upload pics to Blogger so they will come in later.