Patch 3.3 – 2 weeks in.

It’s been two weeks since the launch of 3.3, and here’s a recap of how I feel about the patch so far:

Icecrown Citadel

My last post already covered how easy the first 4 bosses for 10 man are, and my success on my 219-geared pally on Taiwan servers being able to clear the same 4 bosses with ease confirms the case. On the other hand, Saurfang 25 man is tuned to be pretty tight. It’s probably because our raid doesn’t handle the adds cleanly (I wish there would be a stable strat to hand the adds), resulting in early marks and up to 5-6 marks running near the end of the fight. I definitely feel this boss can use a little nerf so it’s not so much a barricade for entry into the rest of the instance (for normal mode anyways).

Tanking Random Heroics

Now, with all 245+ gear and what not warrior tanking in heroics suck. I seriously suggest just gearing to around 35k HP unbuffed, hit and expertise (dodge) cap yourself, then wear dps gear for the rest of your slots, spec and glyph to improve cleave then start chain pulling like mad. I feel like sending threat letters to Blizzard every day I do my random Heroic to fix the rage system that is outdated by however many years the game has been out.

LFD Woes

I’ve heard some pretty bad things happen down that function, though luckily I haven’t been on the receiving end of any of these reports.

• People seeing shit-geared healers and leaving
• People pretending to be tanks (with no tank gear) just to get in quickly then force another player to tank (disband if no other tank available)
• People needing other classes stuff
• etc etc

It’s a good system all-in-all but like every other system it’s bound to be abused by assholes. Probably all we can do is pray it never happens to us.

Occulus

However much I hated the instance and pray every day that I will never random this instance, I have ran across this one once during these two weeks. The nerfed instance is FAR more easy, with an OK group it took us around 15 minutes to clear the place (two ppl noobed out and died 10 seconds into the last boss). I guess it’s acceptable this way, but I’d probably only be doing it if I knew the other 4 people.

Deathbound Wards? What Deathbound Wards?

These are the super-annoying bone giants that don’t come into play until you trigger some random-placed trap in the corridor leading up to lord Marrowgar in Icecrown Citadel. Yes you heard it: Traps. Good old D&D style traps that you must find some rogue to look out for. I seriously think these mobs need to be toned down, esp in 10 man where rogues aren’t always available. Coupled with the mob pathing issues it’s impossible to position these mobs correctly and it just calls for wipefests. 25 man versions of these things have like 5 million HP. Can we have that cut in half please?

Day 1 of patch 3.3 – make sure other MMOs copy this dungeon finder thing.

The Dungeon Finder

This must be the best invention Blizzard has come up with, ever. You type /lfd, check random Northrend heroic, tick your archetype, then 20 seconds later a group pops up and you are automatically teleported to the instance along with your 4 new-found friends. Magic.

Within the instance you can teleport out anytime to restock on supplies, and at the end of the instance you can just port out and find yourself exactly where you were before you joined the group. Same applies even if you bring 4 other friends. And you get 2 emblems of frosts to boot! Luckily I didn’t random the Occulus.

The new Icecrown 5-man instances

They’re pretty meh. With our level of gear the heroics mostly became tank-and-spanks, we didn’t even have much of a chance to figure out what the boss was doing before we were figuring what the boss had dropped.

The one complaint I have as a tank is that groups of linked mobs are placed very badly and it’s really hard to group them up to AE, and the abundance of caster mobs surely doesn’t help. I suppose DKs and Pallies might have a better experience than I had. The other problem with walking in with ToGC25 gear is that the red line of “Not enough rage” has become imprinted at the top of my screen, and my fellow just-as-well-geared dps are drawing aggro left and right. Putting on pieces of DPS gear is a good idea to offset this (though your healer would need to work a little harder).

The new Icecrown raids

Our raid leader was out of town and we weren’t very organized when we wandered into the gates of the Icecrown Citadel, so we just managed to down the first two bosses. Marrowgar was a walk in the park, with Deathwhisper requiring a bit more co-ordination (just a bit). Once we figured what the hell was going on with the adds and how to split the raid better for the job she came down within 2 tries.

After that we went on our 10 man and cleared all 4 bosses. The gunship battle I must say is very creative and one of the better “gimmick” fights to date. Just make sure you don’t do stupid stuff with your jetpack.

Saurfang’s only challenging part is dealing with the two adds that spawn (it’s pretty easy). If you have a druid just have them root one somewhere while your ranged dps kill the other. have a shaman stomp down a earthbind in the middle of the platform and you’re good to go. I switched to my tank spec with piercing howl to help ease the initial rush a little. The fight is otherwise straight-forward.

Conclusion

The trash is far more annoying than the bosses. Especially those giant skeletons before Marrowgar. I still can’t figure out after killing them in both 25 and 10 man what the hell they are doing and what triggers them to spawn. The instance is otherwise not too annoying. (for now).

WoW Patch 3.3 inc! This is now a warrior tanking blog.

Waiting for the servers to come up… or not, might as well just go sleep.

3.3 Warrior Changes

• Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level 6.
• Talents
  • Protection
    • Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.

Yawn. I know. It’s been like this since I installed the expansion, not surprised at all.

3.3 tank loot

If you go through the 3.3 loot lists (especially the new badge rewards), you will find that there’s a lot of +armor on our gear. Which I think is a good thing anyways, since I just don’ think avoidance is going to help us a lot anymore.

On the other hand, even with chill of the throne (ICC zone-wide -20% dodge), it doesn’t mean that dodge is now useless. Unless you have less than 20% gear before the debuff, dodge rating is still worth relatively the same as it was before. So don’t think just because of the debuff it seems like dodge rating is now completely crap and what not.

My guess (because I don’t know how much and how often will bosses hit for, and how hard will it be to keep threat), the priorities for tank gearing will remain EH (Stamina and armor, in that order), followed by the expertise dodge cap (26), avoidance (I would still think that dodge > parry), and least importantly (imo) threat (hit/expertise). Block is still crap.

3.3 instances

Let’s hope the new instances are entertaining. Damn I hated trial of the crusader, killing the same 5 bosses 4 times a week for 4 months certainly wasn’t fun. Luckily Blizzard figured that out and bosses’ hard modes are now toggled instead of totally a separate fight. Let’s hope the new 5 man is enjoyable.

The new random instance mechanic is pretty cool. I wonder if it teleports the group to the instance. Lets hope that I will never encounter the Occulus, ever (yes I know it’s nerfed but I still loathe it A LOT).

Quel’delar

I was quite disappointed that is no tank weapon reward for this quest line. But then again the quest rewards are only ilvl 251, which is just a minor upgrade from the 245 tank sword that every tank is using (the one from heroic anub 10), so might as well grab the 251 2h sword for my dps specs.

***

Lets end this post here for now. More after I get some game time in tomorrow.

A revival of this Blog ~ A WotLK Protection Warrior synopsis

Long time no see!

Don’t know if anyone still reads this blog anyways. But since I’ve got too much time on my hands and nothing to do I might as well type something here.

As I’ve said before I’ve changed from playing a Shaman to my old main (warrior) . I’ve tanked just about every encounter in WotLK by now (save 25 man Algalon), so I might as well write something up about warrior tanking.

The good part

Ever since the mega-changes in 3.0, warriors received an answer to almost every weakness it had in it’s tank arsenal: better scaling threat in all abilities, AoE threat (TC, SW, RS), mobility (warbringer), ranged threat (HT, ranged taunt).

If the warrior had one advantage over the other tank classes (they don’t have alot), it would be versatility (well, and mobility). We also are the only class with spell reflect.

Give us death grip and we’d be the best tanks ever (or Argent Defender, I can’t decide).

The bad part

Well, we don’t have the highest threat(pallies), highest AoE threat (DKs), best shield blocking (pallies), best cooldowns (DKs), nor the highest EH (droods). Basically we’re in the middle of just about every tanking stat category there is.

We also share with droods the most out-of-date and crap-filled resource system: rage.

We suck at ranged threat. S-U-C-K. Heroic throw is on a 1 minute CD. We have 1 single target taunt. Shooting my ranged weapon takes at least a whole second and hits for like 400. Pallies get shield throw, 2 (so to speak) taunts, exorcism (cast time, yeah, but at least it hits hard.). DKs have death coil, D&D, two taunts, and depending on spec icy touch as well. Droods have fairy fire (OP ranged threat ability, period.).

Why a warrior tank?

1. We’re the only spec+class able to stack the sunder debuff without losing on DPS.
2. We have answers to pretty much every situation.
3. We have the best AoE snap aggro (worst sustained threat, mind you).
4. We have the best initial threat (first 6 seconds, any longer pally wins with wings).
5. We have the best mobility (charge, intercept, intervene).
6. We have fear immunity on 30 seconds CD (not that it matters much anymore).
7. We have shield reflect.

Prior to 3.2, there was only one fight where warrior tanks had a significant advantage over the other 3 tank classes: Mimiron hard mode (being able to tank both the bottom and the head at the same time takes so much pressure off your healers, frees up and adds to the ranged dps on the head). For the fights that mattered, we’re dead last on picking up adds on Yogg, we’re tied last place with pallies on Sartharion 3D and tied last place with droods on Hodir hard.

In ToGC Pallies have the upper hand for tanking just about every boss because of Argent Defender. The only place warriors shine is add tanking for Anub, (Maybe Jaraxxus if you just can’t find someone who can kick those fireballs for you) due to warrior mechanics and if you were able to pick up a block rating/value set from Naxx and Ulduar, you will be able to build a set that features 101.6% block+parry+block+miss and you will find yourself next to invincible when tanking adds.

(I’d like to take this time to say “FUCK YOU” to violet hold for continuing to deny me of my Lavanthor’s. I blame blizzard for thinking up this random boss thing)

Talents

Ever since the invention of the deep wounds (15/3/51 +2)spec it has been my tank spec of choice. There’s also the cleave/demo shout spec (for anub adds and when you really need imp. demo), and the Relentless Assault spec (which I never liked).

As of 3.2.2, I use the Shield Wall, Blocking, and Devastate glyphs. I think there was some math on how using the devastate glyph improves its threat generation. Block glyph is actually quite mediocre with the sad amounts of shield block we sport at the moment. The alternatives include glyphs of heroic strike and vigilance (which I personally like alot).

Gear

Aside from that block set you might find handy (well the only other bosses that it’s useful for is Loatheb, harhar). You basically just want to gear for effective health, that is, a combination of stamina and armor.

Avoidance is nice and what not, but it won’t save your life when you most need it (Impales from beasts can’t be avoided, Icehowl and anub stuns you negating your avoidance, twins do mostly spell damage to you, and Jaraxxus hits like a … ball of tissue paper).

Threat isn’t really that much of an issue save on twins, and even if it is with a few misdirections or tricks of the trade it will become a non-issue. Bosses used to not hit hard back in naxx so we could gear for all the expertise and hit we want. But unfortunately in ToGC (and most likely ICC) we don’t have the room to spare for the threat stats anymore. And to be honest, I haven’t been having much problems on threat running at 40 hit rating (expertise is way too abundant in 3.2, I suspect we might run low in ICC, in which case I suggest maintaining the soft cap of 26 expertise).

I personally make sure all my gems fit the colors (for aesthetic reasons), but if you’re in a serious progression guild I suggest you to do otherwise and gem for highest EH, which means ignoring socket bonuses and slotting them with 30 sta’s if it means higher EH. (it’s a marginal difference, but every little bit helps, no?)

In the end, armor and health are still our best friends. Avoid block value and rating like the plague.

Rotation

It used to be that a 4 GCD rotatin of Shield slam, revenge, devastate, filler (Shockwave, Conc. Blow, TC, Demo shout, etc) and moving that rotation ahead every time S&B procs. My recent observations of damage numbers show that it isn’t the case anymore. Thanks to avoiding block value stats and shield slam scaling badly with our gear (the stuns, revenge, and Devastate all scale relatively better). I haven’t had the time to go deep into the numbers (because the difference is probably negligible) and I have just stuck with keeping all my abilities (SS, Rev, CB, SW) on CD and filling with devastates (shouts and clap if necessary).

There’s also some people suggesting that using a slow weapon will greatly enhance your deep wounds and devastate damage. But the last time we had a tank weapon that was slow was Broken Promise from Naxx. The sacrifice of EH (health AND armor, considering the 10 man ToGC sword or Quel’Serrar) just didn’t justify the extra threat/dps (which isn’t significant, and isn’t important).

Conclusions

Well, even though I do have a lot of complaints for the warrior tank, I have successfully tanked almost every encounter in WotLK for my guild (save MTing Sarth 3D and Vexxaz stand-still strat which just wasn’t possible for a warrior tank, and Algalon 25, which we never got to), so we aren’t in that bad of a position.

Blizz officials claim that warriors are the most popular tank for top guilds, my guess is that it’s because these people carried down from the TBC/vanilla ages and since they were skilled enough and the warrior class was sufficient (though not most effective for the most part), there was no reason why not to keep using them as tanks (no to mention they are gear-ready to tank stuff the instant they hit 80).

What I’d like to see in the future is more options for warrior tanking (like how DKs can have so many different tank specs), as honestly protection warriors have received next-to-zero changes since 3.0 and the same play style gets bland when you do the same thing for an entire year. (I sympathize with and give my dearest salute those that have stuck with protection warriors since vanilla wow.)

So what do I want to say? I don’t know, I just wanted to kill time. If you want more information on tanking, I suggest http://www.tankspot.com (though I find that their coverage has strayed far to distant from tanking alone and good information on tanking has become increasingly hard to find on that site).

The quick spring 2009 anime post.

I’ll make it quick this time round.

Series I’m watching :

07 Ghost, Asura Cryin, Eden of the East, Fullmetal Alchemist (sorta), K-on, Pandora Hearts, Phantom, Queen’s Blade, Saki, Shangri-la, Tayutama (aka Kiss on my Deity), Tears to Tiara, Hatsukoi Limited, Polyphonica Crimson S, Senkoku Basara, Senjou no Valkyria.

Yeah I’ve basically covered most of the new series out there.

Details:

07 Ghost: Bishonen everywhere. BL? Yaoi? you bet. I’m not sure why I’m watching this anyways.

Asura Cryin: Robot (sorta) genre with weird characters.

Eden of the East: Original story about a boy and a girl and a wierd mobile phone.

FMA: Re-adaptation of the manga. (since the 1st FMA TV series left on it’s own storyline somewhere down the line) I just watch a few seconds of each episode just to know where the story is at.

K-on: 4 girls, slice of life, band and music, kyoAni. Nuff’said.

Pandora Hearts: Guy is decendent of rich family, on his becoming an adult he gets pulled into the abyss and makes a contract with a demon there. TBH I have no idea what the story is about still.

Phantom: Two normal people who gets their past wiped from memory and turned into killers.

Queen’s Blade: If you need an excuse to watch perverted anime but not the real hentai stuff here’ your chance.

Saki: An anime about Mahjong. Think Captain Tsubasa/Prince of Tennis except it’s Mahjong.

Shangri-la: Apparently this is for loli-cons since… all the non-loli female characters are… monsters.

Tayutama: er… originated from some gal-game, pretty generic.

TTT: gal-game turned into a PS3 game. The PS3 character designs are much better. I’d go play the game.

Hatsukoi Limited: Talks about a bunch of high-school girls and them and their first love.

Polyphonica: This is apparently the 2nd try at an anime adaptation of this light novel series. Apparently the first try was a failure. 2nd try seems pretty bland to me.

Senkoku Basara: Hot blooded men (and women… well not really) in a war-torn japan. It’s actually pretty entertaining, in contrast to what I first expected anyways.

Senjou no Valkyria: WW2 like setting, a girl volunteers to join the armed forces and her struggle against the evil empire that is trying to invade her country. Adapted from the PS3 game.

Must Watches:

K-on, Eden of the East, FMA (If you haven’t seen the manga/first anime)

Recommended:

Senkoku Basara, Hatsukoi Limited, Asura Cryin

“I thought were OK”:

Pandora Hearts, Phantom, Shangri-la, Senjou no Valkyria

“Meh”:

Queen’s Blade, TTT, Tayutama

“I might actually stop watching”:

Polyphonica, 07 Ghost (because of the Yaoi)