Well, last night I said goodbye to my long time guild which has been falling apart at the seems lately. I ended up joining a guild which had several of my old guild members. Go figure lol. Anyways, I started out doing some Hodir dailies when I got a tell from a former guildy to do Archavon. I get summoned there, we kill trash.....there is no boss. Somebody who had already been saved came to the instance. DOH. So we disban and I start doing Heroics.
We start with Heroic VH where I get my pants to drop finally :) They tried to make me work for it as we got the Voidwalker boss and Xezozz (the Ethereal guy), but we 1 shotted both of them.
Next up was Heroic Drak'Tharon which was also the Heroic daily. We blasted thru in in absolutely no time thanks to a great balanced group. I got a DPS chest upgrade off of the Lich boss.
Then we headed off to Heroic Azjol-Nerub and one shotted all of the bosses there with no problems.
Last, we did Heroic Utgardde Pinnacle and blitzed thu the instance, only dying once when the third boss landed right on top of our healer and one shotted him. We collected our loots and were done for the night.
The healer was my favorite Druid healer from my old guild. He is now in my new guild. We got a bunch of badges, and I am less than 40 away from getting my T7 chest. I am thinking that I may be able to get it this weekend. After that I will be going for the gloves for my two piece set bonus (but will be grinding out the Kirin Tor rep for those tanking gloves until then.
My new guild seems a lot like my old guild when my old guild was good. It makes me happy that most of the people I liked are now in this guild. Sometimes change isnt really change at all....besides getting more purples :)
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Arena Season 5: Staying Prot.
EI am going to stay prot for arena season 5 for several reasons (assuming I still have my uber ret pally partner).
1) He does enough damage, and with all of the support abilities I will have as a prot warrior, he should be able to smash them into the ground. Some of the abilities that I really like for PvP
a) Gag Order: If you are specced into this, you really are a caster's worst nightmare. You can silence them from a distance with heroic throw, or while you are up close with a good ole shield bash.
b) Warbringer: Charging in combat from any stance is hawt. Having it break snare effect such as frost nova is extra hawt. A warbring charge followed by a sheld bash is BAAAAAADDDDD for casters.
c) Concussion Blow: Not only does it stun the opponent, but it hits for a very good amount of damage. Mine crits for over 3k.
d) Shield Slam: Besided being a prot warrior's big damage ability, it also takes a buff off of the target. Get a few of these in and you opponent will be practically naked.
e) Shockwave: A nice chunk of damage and an even better AOE stun.
f) Improved Spell Reflect: It will be more deadly for casters to focus fire now. Improved spell reflect not only reflects for you, but you teammate. Frostfire bolt in your FACE.
g) Damage Shield: Watch and laugh as a rogue beats himself to death.
h) Other nice abilities for warriors: Enraged regenration is a nice self heal, and intimidating shout is a nice interrupt. Lets not forget that retalliation and shield wall are now on seperate 5 minute cooldowns and shield block will come in handy against rogues.
It aint bad to be prot in PvP anymore.
1) He does enough damage, and with all of the support abilities I will have as a prot warrior, he should be able to smash them into the ground. Some of the abilities that I really like for PvP
a) Gag Order: If you are specced into this, you really are a caster's worst nightmare. You can silence them from a distance with heroic throw, or while you are up close with a good ole shield bash.
b) Warbringer: Charging in combat from any stance is hawt. Having it break snare effect such as frost nova is extra hawt. A warbring charge followed by a sheld bash is BAAAAAADDDDD for casters.
c) Concussion Blow: Not only does it stun the opponent, but it hits for a very good amount of damage. Mine crits for over 3k.
d) Shield Slam: Besided being a prot warrior's big damage ability, it also takes a buff off of the target. Get a few of these in and you opponent will be practically naked.
e) Shockwave: A nice chunk of damage and an even better AOE stun.
f) Improved Spell Reflect: It will be more deadly for casters to focus fire now. Improved spell reflect not only reflects for you, but you teammate. Frostfire bolt in your FACE.
g) Damage Shield: Watch and laugh as a rogue beats himself to death.
h) Other nice abilities for warriors: Enraged regenration is a nice self heal, and intimidating shout is a nice interrupt. Lets not forget that retalliation and shield wall are now on seperate 5 minute cooldowns and shield block will come in handy against rogues.
It aint bad to be prot in PvP anymore.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Dusting yourself off and starting again.
Within the last week or so, my guild went from a formerly BT raiding guild to pretty much extinct. There were problems with people not showing up to the raids when we finally had the bodies to raid as well as people being impatient and getting saved to other raids.
All of our officers ended up leaving first, followed by the GM kicking all of the ALTs. Then we had several more key members leave that had been there since the beginning. I was one of the final crew to leave the burning ship.
In a way, it is very sad for me. I have been in this guild in one way or another for over 2 years. The first incarnation of the guild ended when the then GM decided to G-kick everyone. We reformed as Reborn and continued doing what we did. Eventually, the GM of our former guild ended up joining on as well. We raided up to and including BT before the expansion. Towards the end of BC, raiding really started to die off. Then we all started leveling in Wrath. The first ones to 80 bolted and went to guilds that had already started raiding. Then the other problems set in. Not only had we lost good players to other guilds, we lost several tanks and healers who just didnt pick up the expansion.
At the same time, I kind of feel a bit of relief. There had been too much drama lately, and that is not how the guild rolled. We were a bunch of bullshitters just having fun together. If we couldnt even be that, then perhaps it was time to move on.
R.I.P Reborn. I will remember you fondly and dedicate my first phat purplz to your memory. Thanks for the good times.
All of our officers ended up leaving first, followed by the GM kicking all of the ALTs. Then we had several more key members leave that had been there since the beginning. I was one of the final crew to leave the burning ship.
In a way, it is very sad for me. I have been in this guild in one way or another for over 2 years. The first incarnation of the guild ended when the then GM decided to G-kick everyone. We reformed as Reborn and continued doing what we did. Eventually, the GM of our former guild ended up joining on as well. We raided up to and including BT before the expansion. Towards the end of BC, raiding really started to die off. Then we all started leveling in Wrath. The first ones to 80 bolted and went to guilds that had already started raiding. Then the other problems set in. Not only had we lost good players to other guilds, we lost several tanks and healers who just didnt pick up the expansion.
At the same time, I kind of feel a bit of relief. There had been too much drama lately, and that is not how the guild rolled. We were a bunch of bullshitters just having fun together. If we couldnt even be that, then perhaps it was time to move on.
R.I.P Reborn. I will remember you fondly and dedicate my first phat purplz to your memory. Thanks for the good times.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Naxx fails, Guild fails.....but I did save money on insurance by switching to Geico!
So, a lot of new in my world (of warcraft) over the weekend. First thing is that the guild I have been in for the last 2 plus years basically fell apart. Not getting the people they needed fro Naxx runs, the GL left followed by the old guild leader announcing that the guild would no longer be a raiding guild. This was met by
A) A mass exodus of people who still want to raid.
B) The new (old) guild leader kicking out everybody's alts.
There are now less than 35 people in guild. At this point, my arena buddy offered to get my into his guild as they are short on Warrior tanks and are the 5th ranked raiding guild on the server. I am leaning towards joining them. Most of the people I have played with over all of this time have now moved on and we don't even have a single healer in Guild. Another plus is that the new guild would have raid nights that are compatible with my real life schedule. I think I have already made my decision, it is just hard to let it go.
On a less gloomy note, I got my Red Sword of Courage over the weekend finally! Those damn pants out of Heroic VH still havent dropped yet :( I run that heroic pretty much daily and have yet to see it drop. Cloth bracers seems to drop just about every single run.
I did my first foray into Naxx in a pug, and it did not go well. The tank were good, the healers were good, but the DPS was terribly low. It did not help that the raid leader brought along an extra tank :( The top DPS in the run was at about 1400 dps. That is very bad for Naxx. That is good at level 70 running SSC or something. Not level 80 running Naxx. Needless to say, we were unable to get Anub'Rhekan down and it costed me roughly 50 gold in repair bills.
I finally did some questing and such in Northrend with my other toons. I respecced my Druid Boomkin and headed to Howling Fjorde, then I respecced my Paly ret and headed out to Borean Tundra. So far so good. I got about half a level of XP on both and then went back to my warrior.
I have noticed since the expansion that there seems to be a great lack of healers. Before my guild fell apart, there were probably on 3 healers for the whole guild. Everybody else went DPS to level and just seemed to never spec back. When I try to pug heroics, I also find that the channels are just filled with a few tanks and a bunch of DPS. Im guessing that most of the healers are doing guild runs and arent really pugging anything.
A) A mass exodus of people who still want to raid.
B) The new (old) guild leader kicking out everybody's alts.
There are now less than 35 people in guild. At this point, my arena buddy offered to get my into his guild as they are short on Warrior tanks and are the 5th ranked raiding guild on the server. I am leaning towards joining them. Most of the people I have played with over all of this time have now moved on and we don't even have a single healer in Guild. Another plus is that the new guild would have raid nights that are compatible with my real life schedule. I think I have already made my decision, it is just hard to let it go.
On a less gloomy note, I got my Red Sword of Courage over the weekend finally! Those damn pants out of Heroic VH still havent dropped yet :( I run that heroic pretty much daily and have yet to see it drop. Cloth bracers seems to drop just about every single run.
I did my first foray into Naxx in a pug, and it did not go well. The tank were good, the healers were good, but the DPS was terribly low. It did not help that the raid leader brought along an extra tank :( The top DPS in the run was at about 1400 dps. That is very bad for Naxx. That is good at level 70 running SSC or something. Not level 80 running Naxx. Needless to say, we were unable to get Anub'Rhekan down and it costed me roughly 50 gold in repair bills.
I finally did some questing and such in Northrend with my other toons. I respecced my Druid Boomkin and headed to Howling Fjorde, then I respecced my Paly ret and headed out to Borean Tundra. So far so good. I got about half a level of XP on both and then went back to my warrior.
I have noticed since the expansion that there seems to be a great lack of healers. Before my guild fell apart, there were probably on 3 healers for the whole guild. Everybody else went DPS to level and just seemed to never spec back. When I try to pug heroics, I also find that the channels are just filled with a few tanks and a bunch of DPS. Im guessing that most of the healers are doing guild runs and arent really pugging anything.
Friday, December 12, 2008
AOE tanking. Not just for Paladins.
When you first hit Heroics, you won't generally be completely AOE tanking. You will probably need at least one CC because the mobs can hit damn hard. With that said, with the changes to the warrior class, there is not excuse not to be able to AOE tank. Thunderclap is pretty awesome now and for me crits for over 1000.
Thunderclap is probably your most important ability for AOE tanking. Not only does it do some decent damage, but it also reduces the attack speed of things hitting you. Getting hit less=good (at least in content you dont outgear by a ton).
Shockwave is the new hotness for Prot Warriors. I does a bunch of damage and also stuns the targets for a short amount of time. My Shockwaves crit for well over 3k damage. The cooldown on this ability is not incredibly short, so you will have to choose when to use it.
Demoralizing Shout is still as important as ever when AOE tanking. Making things hit you less hard is good. If you get smashed, so will the rest of the group.
Cleave is one of the old standbys for AOE tanking and is still a good option.
Glyph of Sunder will also help a lot when AOE tanking. It will place a sunder on a nearby bad guy when you sunder your main target. Its like the old tab target AOE tanking only dumbed down.
Generally what I like to do it charge in, thunder clap, backup, and then Shockwave. While they are stunned you can throw up a demo shout. Follow that with another thunderclap, and do you regular threat rotation on the main target. You can always tabe sunder if you like or throw in a cleave or two. If the AOE pack is getting read to go down, dont blow your Shockwave cooldown again. Make sure to wait until the next group for that nice big chunk of AOE threat.
AOE tanking is just that...AOE tanking. You are using your AOE and the DPS is probably doing the same. If you want them to focus fire a target, make sure to state that or mark it. If you dont, and they pull aggro, it is your fault Mr. Tanky.
As always, tank responsibly. This message has been paid for by Darraxus for President.
Thunderclap is probably your most important ability for AOE tanking. Not only does it do some decent damage, but it also reduces the attack speed of things hitting you. Getting hit less=good (at least in content you dont outgear by a ton).
Shockwave is the new hotness for Prot Warriors. I does a bunch of damage and also stuns the targets for a short amount of time. My Shockwaves crit for well over 3k damage. The cooldown on this ability is not incredibly short, so you will have to choose when to use it.
Demoralizing Shout is still as important as ever when AOE tanking. Making things hit you less hard is good. If you get smashed, so will the rest of the group.
Cleave is one of the old standbys for AOE tanking and is still a good option.
Glyph of Sunder will also help a lot when AOE tanking. It will place a sunder on a nearby bad guy when you sunder your main target. Its like the old tab target AOE tanking only dumbed down.
Generally what I like to do it charge in, thunder clap, backup, and then Shockwave. While they are stunned you can throw up a demo shout. Follow that with another thunderclap, and do you regular threat rotation on the main target. You can always tabe sunder if you like or throw in a cleave or two. If the AOE pack is getting read to go down, dont blow your Shockwave cooldown again. Make sure to wait until the next group for that nice big chunk of AOE threat.
AOE tanking is just that...AOE tanking. You are using your AOE and the DPS is probably doing the same. If you want them to focus fire a target, make sure to state that or mark it. If you dont, and they pull aggro, it is your fault Mr. Tanky.
As always, tank responsibly. This message has been paid for by Darraxus for President.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
All Aboard the Fail Boat: A Guide How Not To; Heroic Violet Hold
That pretty much explains more horrible, horrible luck with heroic VH last night. The biggest fail part is the we got the eyeball boss and the aarokoa boss. Yeah....easy ones. The moral of the story is to always get a good healer, but then we knew that. Lets take a spin in the time machine and see how we got to this point.
So, I log on after work figuring I will get a very quick Heroic VH run in before the Gym. We go in with a Mage officer, his GF (a druid healer), a RL mage buddy, and a Ret Pally from Guild. We get in, everything is going fine, and then we wipe on the eyeball boss. Why? Because they kept DPSing during the optical focus phase. So we run back in, and we start over. We kill the first two bosses quite easily. We are on the 15th wave of trash, and a blue caster offhand drops. The Druid healer wants it. While she is busy checking out the shiny new blue item, wave 16 slowly beats me to death. Wipe....on trash......FAIL.
I head off to the Gym, come home, spend some time with my lady, and try to get the run going again. We get our healing lead officer (priest, who BTW had to be in bed shortly), a different officer playing the other officer's mage, a freshly dinged 80 warrior from guild, and the same ret pally from earlier. We start killing the mobs and notice that we get the Aarakoa boss first....I didnt put i back on Heroic......FAIL. Our priest has to go to bed, and I finally convince out original druid healer to come back.
First try with the new healer.....dead on the first boss....again. She whispers me that she will give it one more shot. We clear everything up until the last boss. As the last boss spawns, out ret pally dies. The fight is long and the Druid runs out of mana. The Mage is dead. Did we pull it off? Hell no. I die, the pally reconnects, doesnt bubble and gets killed, warrior is dead, healer dies with the last boss sitting at 3500 health. Demoralizing.
I give it a rest for a bit and decide to go and mine some nodes and crap to make some cash and to also not want to kill myself :) My former arena partner Mura finished 25 man Naxx and offered to come along. The only problem is we couldnt find a healer at first. Then I got a tell from a level 80 priest that he would heal it. So it is Mura, our Warrior, the Mage DPSing, and the PUG priest healing....or not healing is more like it. We get to the first boss. Fail....the priest either had horrible lag or terrible reaction time because we were not getting many heals. After the wipe, he says he has to go and jets.
At around this time, I see that my favorite Heroic Healer is finished with a 25 man Naxx that he was involved in. I hit him up and he comes in to heal. We get it that time with no wipes and no real serious danger at all for that matter. Goes to show how much a good healer means to a group.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Helping out your Healers
A tank helping out their healer can go a long way. It makes people want to run with you, and you will make new healer friends that invite you along to their runs. This goes for guild healers as well as pug healers.
One of the easiest things a tank can do to help is use his cooldowns. In the AOE fest that was the end of BC, people stopped using common sense and cooldowns. Now that we are back to heroics and raiding, this can be bad. There are a number of things you can do to help your healing brothers and sisters out.
1) Use your trinkets: If you have trinkets with on use abilities, they should be on your tool bar. Better yet, make a macro that charges, then uses one of your trinket uses. This gives the healer a moment to get his bearings straight and start healing you. If you don't have on-use trinkets equipped (like me atm), then disregard this.
2) Mark targets for CC: It is not old and outdated. It is still good practice, and hit keeps you from taking 15k damage in a second. Marking has been around forever. Once again, people forgot about it in BC-AOE. Marking targets is also important as it make you learn what each mob does. Knowing your shit is part of being a good tank, and not a face roller.
3) Use your cooldowns: Pre Wrath, you didnt really need to use your cooldowns or special abilities. Shield wall was on a very long timer, and it was usually a given that shield block would be up all the time. Well, times have changed. Shield block is now on a 45 second cooldown. This is a huge change as you can no longer spam it. It is best used when pulling, then charging into a group. You take a lot less damage and give your healer a chance to catch up. Shield wall is now 5 minute cooldown and reduces all damage by 60 percent. Pretty nifty as it can be used on EVERY boss fight. Last stand is another nice OH SHIT button with pretty short cooldown. A new one is Frenzied Regeneration. This is basically a pretty powerful warrior hot that can help out a lot. If you notice you are taking alot of damage, it would be very useful help to the healer for you to pop it. It has a 3 minute cooldown.
4) Silence, and Stun, and reflect OH MY!!!!: These are normal abilities that should be used on a regular basis to help out your healer. Pretty much every tank should be specced into Gag Order. If you are, this gives you two silences. Heroic throw will silence casters as will shield bash. This is win. You can pull caster mobs with Heroic throw and have then run straight to you without having to LOS. Make sure that you are silencing caster mobs when you can. Spell reflect is also a very nice ability. If you are specced into the improved version, then you can reflect spells cast at your buddies as well. They will tank you for it.
5) Communicate: It is all well and good to use the abilities given to you. The last thing you can do to help out a healer is to let them know that you are popping a powerful ability. This may give them a chance to regen a little mana, or heal up an injured party member. In all relationships, communication is key. This includes the Tank-Healer relationship.
On a side note, I tried to mostly pug heroic VH last night, and it was not happening. I had a terrible DK for my guild who was doing under 1k dps, a pug hunter who was all kinds of dumb doing around 1k, and a very good pug hunter doing about 2k dps. The healer was also very good and a pug. Unfortunately, we got the Ethereal boss that drops the orbs, and the DPS kept doing dumb shit. The boss will enrage if his orbs get to close and hit me for 10-12k damage. Well, I would be kiting him along, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of ghould pop up and TAUNT the boss. He stays there whacking ghouls, the orbs catch up, he come back after me, and smashes me to bits.
We wiped 4 times on that boss before I logged off in disgust. I am probably going to talk to some officers about the DK, before he gets into a raid and sucks it up. During BC, he was an extremly well geared shadow priest that struggled to do 800 DPS. Now he is a level 80 DK and was only doing 800 DPS. He is well below the curve for similar geared DKs, and I fear he doesnt really know how to play. His terrible DPS was always tolerated because a) everyone likes him (he is a very nice guy), and b) he was a SP which gave mana to everyone. Now he is a DK which are a dime a dozen, and he really doesnt stack up.
One of the easiest things a tank can do to help is use his cooldowns. In the AOE fest that was the end of BC, people stopped using common sense and cooldowns. Now that we are back to heroics and raiding, this can be bad. There are a number of things you can do to help your healing brothers and sisters out.
1) Use your trinkets: If you have trinkets with on use abilities, they should be on your tool bar. Better yet, make a macro that charges, then uses one of your trinket uses. This gives the healer a moment to get his bearings straight and start healing you. If you don't have on-use trinkets equipped (like me atm), then disregard this.
2) Mark targets for CC: It is not old and outdated. It is still good practice, and hit keeps you from taking 15k damage in a second. Marking has been around forever. Once again, people forgot about it in BC-AOE. Marking targets is also important as it make you learn what each mob does. Knowing your shit is part of being a good tank, and not a face roller.
3) Use your cooldowns: Pre Wrath, you didnt really need to use your cooldowns or special abilities. Shield wall was on a very long timer, and it was usually a given that shield block would be up all the time. Well, times have changed. Shield block is now on a 45 second cooldown. This is a huge change as you can no longer spam it. It is best used when pulling, then charging into a group. You take a lot less damage and give your healer a chance to catch up. Shield wall is now 5 minute cooldown and reduces all damage by 60 percent. Pretty nifty as it can be used on EVERY boss fight. Last stand is another nice OH SHIT button with pretty short cooldown. A new one is Frenzied Regeneration. This is basically a pretty powerful warrior hot that can help out a lot. If you notice you are taking alot of damage, it would be very useful help to the healer for you to pop it. It has a 3 minute cooldown.
4) Silence, and Stun, and reflect OH MY!!!!: These are normal abilities that should be used on a regular basis to help out your healer. Pretty much every tank should be specced into Gag Order. If you are, this gives you two silences. Heroic throw will silence casters as will shield bash. This is win. You can pull caster mobs with Heroic throw and have then run straight to you without having to LOS. Make sure that you are silencing caster mobs when you can. Spell reflect is also a very nice ability. If you are specced into the improved version, then you can reflect spells cast at your buddies as well. They will tank you for it.
5) Communicate: It is all well and good to use the abilities given to you. The last thing you can do to help out a healer is to let them know that you are popping a powerful ability. This may give them a chance to regen a little mana, or heal up an injured party member. In all relationships, communication is key. This includes the Tank-Healer relationship.
On a side note, I tried to mostly pug heroic VH last night, and it was not happening. I had a terrible DK for my guild who was doing under 1k dps, a pug hunter who was all kinds of dumb doing around 1k, and a very good pug hunter doing about 2k dps. The healer was also very good and a pug. Unfortunately, we got the Ethereal boss that drops the orbs, and the DPS kept doing dumb shit. The boss will enrage if his orbs get to close and hit me for 10-12k damage. Well, I would be kiting him along, and then all of a sudden, a bunch of ghould pop up and TAUNT the boss. He stays there whacking ghouls, the orbs catch up, he come back after me, and smashes me to bits.
We wiped 4 times on that boss before I logged off in disgust. I am probably going to talk to some officers about the DK, before he gets into a raid and sucks it up. During BC, he was an extremly well geared shadow priest that struggled to do 800 DPS. Now he is a level 80 DK and was only doing 800 DPS. He is well below the curve for similar geared DKs, and I fear he doesnt really know how to play. His terrible DPS was always tolerated because a) everyone likes him (he is a very nice guy), and b) he was a SP which gave mana to everyone. Now he is a DK which are a dime a dozen, and he really doesnt stack up.
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