All of Tekkub’s addons have the same premise: brief, efficient code. None of them do anything super-flashy, but they will all not tax any resources and are fantastic at what they do.

I will only post about those Tekkub addons that I am actually using myself, but for the whole masterlist, check out his website. Also well worth a read is an interview he once did with NoStock UI.

Cork
Once upon a time I used Smartbuff as buff reminder, but it was bulky, tended to be annoying, and just didn’t do anymore. With WotLK, Tekkub released Cork and I switched to it. Cork reminds you of many things. No shout up? Missing food buff? Need to repair? Got some clams to shuck? Vigilance dropped off your target? Cork will tell you. You get a frame and you can place the anchor anywhere, and whenever something is missing, the frame will pop up. Cork comes with a macro that you can bind to a key. If you’re not in combat, you can poke the macro key and whatever is at the top of the list of reminders will be done (unless it’s stuff like repairing or missing food buff). Vigilance and Earth Shield reminders are special, Cork needs to detect that you cast those to start reminding you when they fall off. Repairs can be set up for a certain threshhold, mine is 40%, e.g.

The uses for this are really infinite. Seal and Blessing reminders for paladins, buff reminders for all buff classes (including group members missing buffs), poison and weapon buff reminders, Viper/Hawk switches for hunters, tracking reminders, what have you.

Size: 55kb, SmartBuff has 3 times its size

Control Freak
Of zero use for warriors, this is one of my top addons on any class that uses Crowd Control. Lol, whut’s CC? Seriously, I expect Blizzard to come back to needing CC for Cataclysm, this AoE dumbness needs to stop. Aaaaaanyway. Even if CC is mostly used for soloing now, this addon will make it tons easier. It places a tiny frame that says either Control Freak or CF on your screen. Target a mob, click on it, and the target is now your /focus. Click the frame again, and your class default CC will be used, e.g. Polymorph as mage or Sap as rogue. If you have multiple CC options, like warlocks (Enslave and Banish) you can set the preferred CC method. Like most Tekkub addons, this can also be keybound if you prefer pressing buttons instead of clicking.

Size: 73kb

GnomishVendorShrinker
Ever stood at a vendor that had gazillions of items and you had to click through page after page until you made it to whatever you want? I am looking at you, tier and badge vendors. GnomishVendorShrinker changes the vendor frame and instead you will get single-line items as scrolling list. Click on an item and you buy it directly. Shift-click and choose the amount you want to buy. Alt-Click and you buy a full stack. Type whatever you are looking for into the search box and the result with be highlit for easy location. Makes it extremely easy to e.g. find the gem cut of choice on the JC vendors. Speaking of JC vendors, recipes you do not know yet are blue, and items you cannot buy at all are red. In my sample screenshot, I was using ’solid’ as search term and based on the highlighting, you can see that I already know that cut, just like I already know the Delicate Cardinal Ruby.

Size: 10 kb.

GoodNewsEveryone
First off, any addon that uses Professor Farnsworth as LDB icon is pure win. Yay Futurama! GNE is Tekkub’s latest and is a proc reminder. Now, many of you might be using Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text which shows proc events, but GNE will add a timer. The list of supported procs is long. I haven’t tested yet if you can add your own procs using the spellID, but I will test if you can add Sword & Board. If you need to watch your procs a lot, like I do as frost DK waiting for Killing Machine and Rime procs, this is very useful.

Size: 21 kb

Panda
This is a profession addon that will be useful to JCers, Scribes and Enchanters the most. It also supports alchemy but I didn’t find that part so useful. However, the benefits for the other three professions are awesome. What does Panda do? It simplifies prospecting, milling and disenchanting, and offers a great interface to cutting gems and making glyphs. On a tab you get to see what raw mats you have in your inventory and with one click you can disenchant, mill or prospect without digging through your inventory. It will also list Auctioneer or AuctionLite prices in the overviews of those professions, if you want to use the raw gems and pigments and dusts you got for something useful right away. In my screenshot you can see that I have 10 saronite ore in my inventory, a click on it would prospect. You can also see the going rates for the various raw gems and which ones I have on me right now.

Size: 43 kb

tekability
This tiny addon does one thing exactly. It adds durability values to your Character Pane. At a glance you can see what durability your stuff is at. Handy!

Size: 8 kb

teksLoot
This is a rewrite of XLoot group. Tiny loot roll frames in group that you can place anywhere. Good stuff. In my example you can see that 2 people rolled need and 2 people passed. If I’d mouseover the icons, it would list who has rolled need and who passed.

Size: 4 kb

TourGuide
IMHO, this is the best leveling addon out there. It’s no QuestHelper or Carbonite. It’s small, Jame’s leveling guides were ported to Tour Guide, and if you also install LightHeaded and TomTom you have a fabulous combo for leveling. I level just about any alt with this and it makes leveling efficient and easy without ever lagging my game, something you cannot say for all leveling addons.

Size: 412 kb

VendorBait
This little addon does a very little thing. It will highlight the quest item that would vendor for the most gold, with a sparkly frame around it. Yay for more gold.

Size: 3 kb

Ampere + MakeRocketGoNow: I posted about those two addons before, so check out those old posts.

There you go, your big ol’ Tekkub special. I am such a fangirl, just so you know.

• How did the idea of an all female guild emerge? Why just girls? Tell me about the background.
  
  Daughters of the Horde was born in the Livejournal community wow_ladies. This is currently the biggest WoW community in LJ, with 7k+ members. Back in the day, when WoW was still young and fresh, wow_ladies was the refuge where girls were able to talk about WoW with other girls, as the game was absolutely male-dominated at the time. The percentage of female players is a lot higher now than it was then. It all started with this post. Basically a guild of community members, all female, a haven. They ran a poll, horde won as faction, and Daughters of the Horde was created on Bronzebeard-US. A short time later, Daughters of the Alliance was created on the same server, because some people preferred the ‘prettier’ races at the time. Many DotA players are also members of DotH and vice versa, and I am close friends with a bunch of them. I think we have maybe one original member left from back then, our former GM Tryna, who led DotH through the first couple years until recently.

  Originally, most people rolled alts to play in DotH, with their mains on other servers, and when dealing with boys got too much, they came to chill in DotH. This, to some degree is still happening today. Many members raid more seriously on other servers and hang out with us when they just want to relax and have some light fun. But there’s also a core of people who have made Bronzebeard their main home. I have tried playing on other servers, for example a realm with RL friends, but I always
  miss my home on Bronzebeard.

• What (if anything), apart from the all-girl-thing, do you think differs Daughters of the Horde from other guilds?
  
  I think we offer more diversity than the typical WoW guild. If you look at guild structures, there’s usually leveling guilds, social guilds, and guilds that raid. While we’re not exactly a leveling guild, we are extremely alt-friendly. All of us love to play alts, and it’s not uncommon that our members have all character slots full on Bronzebeard. Our guild is also very social, there’s always some chatter going on in gchat. We also do some light, yet successful raiding, so you can really do anything in our guild aside from dedicated 25-man raiding.
• What kind of mood or atmosphere is there in the guild?

  I think it’s usually very light-hearted and fun. Some of our members are crazy funny, like the world’s sexiest orc DK, Fangril. I am probably one of the more serious people in DotH, because I tend to take PvE progress very seriously.

• I’ve heard a lot of preconceived notions about girls in WoW-guilds. That having a girl in a guild can cause more drama and so forth. What are your thoughts on that? Is there a lot of drama in Daughters of the Horde.

Ah, the drama question. I think that drama can happen with girls in a guild, but it can happen with guys in a guild as well. Loot-drama is not based on gender. I think it’s just a stereotype that girls in WoW mean drama. It’s not my experience in DotH at all. In my 3 years as officer, there were moments that had some drama, but they’re very rare and unusual. I have seen some people join who could probably be classified as ‘guild princesses’, always more interested in taking than giving to the guild, but people like that usually leave fairly quickly, because gender cannot really be used as an advantage when we’re all the same.

• How do you solve conflicts that arise in the guild?
  
  We don’t have a GM and officers, we’re more an officer council. We rotate different duties amongst officers, including the GM hat. We regularly run a Suggestion Box in our LJ community, which allows people to voice concerns which only the officers can read. We encourage people to approach the officers if there are any issues, but in all honesty, we’re not really asked that often about problem situations. I think girls might have the tendency to just swallow certain issues, in hopes they’ll go away. There really is very little conflict that we’re made aware of.
• What does the recruitment process look like? How can you check and know for sure that the one applying to join is a girl?
  
  We actively recruit maybe once a year, in wow_ladies, but of course we’re always taking in new members. Joining us is pretty easy. There is no application process. All that they have to do is to /join our recruitment channel and give us their LJ name. We then check their LJ. Sometimes it’s very easy to tell that it must be a girl, but sometimes it isn’t, and then we do Ventrilo checks. Just a quick chat, to verify it’s a girl via voice chat. That’s usually the point that weeds out the most guys trying to sneak in, because the amount of people who mysteriously do not have a microphone, or it’s broken, or they can’t install Vent nor use in-game chat, it’s ridiculous. As we were originally born in a Livejournal community, we require an LJ account for all our members. Basically our forum replacement. We post everything regarding guild business in wow_doth.livejournal.com
• What kind of char is most common within Daughters of the Horde? Are there a lot of males? Which class is most popular?
  
  We have quite a few male characters, but the overwhelming majority plays female characters. We have very very few tanks, to my own sorrow, not as many healers as one would like to think, and used to have mostly ranged DPS. Lately, this has seen a bit of a shift that mirrors the general WotLK tendency, with a lot more people playing melee DPS after DKs were introduced. Based on statistics, hunter is the most popular class, closely followed by deathknights. When TBC was released, our guild grew exponentially, in what I would like to call the ‘Belf Invasion of 2007′. They’re still by far the most popular race, outweighing everything else by a huge margin, which makes me sad. Only the few and the proud like me play orcs. It’s a running joke in DotH that Thrall will kill a kitten everytime someone re-rolls a bloodelf.

  I play the least-played race and class combo, orc warrior, what does this say about me?

• Another preconceived notion is that girls usually prefer to play healers or support classes — do you agree? How is the balance between the classes in your guild?
  
  As mentioned before, we are usually short on healers. I mean, we obviously have enough to raid with, and more healers than tanks, but DPS classes hugely outweigh anything else in DotH. We have some fantastic DPS in DotH, so that preconceived notion is really not true for us at all.
• The male writers in the magazine want to know if there is much giggle and joking around on your vent-channel.
  
  That is a really funny question. I know that it’s common in many guilds to hang out in Vent at all times, but we don’t do that. We mostly use Vent for raiding or when we have a social event, and even then, it’s few people talking. I try to talk as much as possible when I am in Vent, but some girls really aren’t comfortable with talking much, while they type novels in gchat. I think most of us love to be silly, but not the gigglish type.
• What kind of comments do Daughters of the Horde usually get? Do people like the idea of a guild consisting of all girls? Do they think that it’s wrong to exlude and include players based on their sex? And what is your reply to people who gets upset about it?
  
  We’re one of the oldest guilds on our server at this point and have seen many guilds rise and fall. A lot of newer players actually have no clue that we’re all girls. We don’t go out and flaunt it, we just assume that our guild tag is obvious enough. I think old-school Bronzebeard respect us, and everyone else just assumes we’re all male. Whenever I pug as a tank and talk strategy on bosses, people always refer to me as male. Because, you know, girls would never tank, haha. We used to have one guy
  who long transferred servers, who hated both DotH and DotA and loved to slander both guilds in the realm forum. But as he was the realm clown, no one took him serious at all. He actually tried to sneak into our guild under a different name, and then in protest formed his own ‘all-girls’ guild that failed dramatically.

  Other than that guy, no one’s ever had any problems with us for being exclusive to girls.

• World of Warcraft is a game that has a big female audience, at least compared to other MMO:s like Eve Online, Warhammer or Age of Conan. Why do you think that is? What does WoW have that the other games lack?
  
  WoW has the most intuitive interface and you only need to play a couple of hours to get into it. I think the learning curve is probably more steep in other MMOs. Also, I think girls prefer PvE more than PvP, though we have a couple die-hard PvPers and arena players in DotH as well. I think AoC probably has very low appeal for girls, because the core of it is so sexist. I mean, they only recently fixed that female characters hit just as hard as males. At least I hope that was fixed. I wouldn’t call WoW easy, but it’s fun, colorful, very easy to learn, and yet hard to master.
• I’ve received a couple of mails from girls who are considering WoW to be a sexist game and who thinks that Blizzard is objectifying the female characters, and that complains about being harassed ingame by “horny 15-yearolds”. What are your thoughts on this? Thoughts on being a girl and playing WoW.
  
  My general advice for any female player would be to not flaunt their gender. I mean, realistically, if you look at things, no one really needs to know if you’re a boy or a girl behind the computer. Just play at your best. That way you get to avoid the teenage hornballs that no doubt exist in WoW. Yes, WoW has objectifying moments, though there are a lot fewer models these days that make me shake my head. My alt mage is currently running around in thigh-highs, and my warrior used to wear
  plate-thigh highs and a plate bikini in her 40s, stuff that looks like a shirt and normal legguards on a male model. But you know, it’s harmless stuff. No one’s boobs are hanging out, and considering the amount of objectification happening in advertisement, TV, and movies, it’s really minimal. It doesn’t bother me.

  I think Blizzard understands that this is seen as an issue in parts, and I can’t recall any skank gear in Northrend. I mean, sure, paladin T8 shows off female bellies [edit: the interview was done before Blizzard changed the model], but for the most part, female characters are just as covered as male ones. And that’s a good improvement.

First off, my shameful leveling project. It should be a testament to the ease of leveling in general, but in particular hunters when I can proclaim that my hunter just hit 70. I rolled her in the first week of August, and give her a playtime of 3-8 hours a week tops, which is very little for me. Yes, the one class I vowed I would never level because it’s so boooooring. But you know what? Boooooring can be very relaxing. As officer and raid leader, I go through bouts of burnout and stress, and that’s when the hunter comes in. True, I could just send the pet in and auto-shoot my way to glory, but it’s been very relaxing. Tiraxi is currently a BM hunter in absolutely craptastic gear (I have done one on-level instance, Blood Furnace), but at 80 I am looking forward to going Survival and might even raid with my German friends. Maybe. They raid a lot more than I do and are all gung-ho about hardmodes. But who knows? I might fit in. And if not? That’s also a-okay.

On Kadomi, I have drastically reduced the amount of heroics she’s doing. After tanking every single day of the week, in a frenzy to save up Emblems of Triumph, it all kinda deflated after I got the 45 emblems shoulders. I have been trying to get some achievements in while doing heroics, and that is an aspect I still enjoy. If timing wasn’t such an issue, I would be all over an achievement group. Me and mah favorite gals, we keep talking about it, and then never act on it. One achievement I had never tried for was Abuse the Ooze and though we completed it, I can see why people might skip it. Those slimes can get out of control very quickly, sheesh!

I recently finished the Champion quests for all Argent Tournament factions and woohoo, I am a Crusader. *yawn* Those quests get old, I tell ya, but I am a pro at jousting now. As Crusader I am pretty happy, because those dailies are short, fun, and in a nice route of getting nice gold and Champion Seals into my pocket. The first reward I saved up for was the Pony for my squire. After all my squire looks like mini-me (if I’d ever take off my helmet). Adorable! Disappointing that I can only use mailbox, bank or vendor, instead of all three in a timed window. Boo!

Then one night one of our guildies had an interesting bug. She sold something to a vendor and bam, she got the Gruul’s Lair achievement. Bizarre! This started some sighing from people who never got that achievement, and I decided to drum people up and off we were to Blade’s Edge, to re-visit the big guy. 10 level 80s, ready to take on the world! High King Maulgar and friends was an adventure. Our Krosh mage tank didn’t know how, our enslaving warlock couldn’t keep perma-fearing Olm off me, and those ogres laughed and mocked us. It took us four tries before we finally had enough control over the fight that we pulled it off. Not so easy still, that pull. Gruul himself was pretty much a joke. I seemed to have an endless stream of dodges and had fun stuff like -312 (3400 blocked) in my combat log when he managed to hit me. People were happy about their achievements, and I got to rar for justice, because they finally were mine. My QQ post about my SO outrolling me on the T4 shouldertoken is still a vivid memory for me, so when HKM dropped two Protector tokens, I was all over one! Right after the raid my friend Cariad and I went straight for Aldor Rise and then I got on a table to be at her level. Yay, Warbringer Shoulders!

The loot gods are so very kind to me lately. We did VoA-10 and Onyxia right afterwards, and Gleaming Quel’Serrar dropped. I only took it for looks and to maybe be my threat weapon in heroics (stats > unreliable proc), but I also won the roll for Onyxia’s head. Bye-bye Seal of the Pantheon, hello Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman! You might not be the best trinket in the world but in gear sets where I need def over stamina, you will now be my precioussssss.

 
As added bonus, Auriaya then coughed up a shield for the first time, and I won the roll, and am as happy as a tank can be. The same raid ID, we managed to clear to Yogg-Saron within our six hours of alotted raid time, with maybe 30 minutes of tries on Y-S himself. I extended the ID and we will devote a full raid to learning this fight. As our three tries were pretty disastrous in P1, any advice is welcome. Oh god, I want to kill him so bad, and I am so happy he’s such a challenge for us. Killing him will feel super-awesome, I know it.

So yeah, I guess I have been busy. What’s up with y’all? Getting excited for Icecrown?

What’s changed? Devastate has, that’s what. Previously basically the support ability that let you stack 5 Sunders with a threat bonus, Devastate is now almost back to the role it had in TBC. It’s made a huge comeback in our rotations when its weapon damage was increased to 60% plus an additional bonus damage of 20% per stack of Sunder Armor. This makes Devastate one of the top 3 damage abilities of a protection warrior, and is usually only surpassed by Heroic Strike and Shield Slam for me.

Wartotem over in the ever knowledgeable realms of Tankspot has created a DPS/TPS spreadsheet that does the number crunching for us.

The results:

Devastate now tops Revenge easily when it comes to both threat and DPS. It’s even better when you have the 2pc T8 or 2pc T9 bonus. Or both. It’s also stronger than Concussion Blow and Shockwave, but those 2 produce more damage than Devastate.

What does this mean for our rotation?

Priority has shifted to:

> >  > >

On bosses, Shockwave and CB will continue to provide greater DPS despite not stunning the boss. Revenge has fallen to the bottom of the priority list, but is still the ability with the best rage to threat ratio and does more damage than Dev. This makes it very valuable in low rage situations, e.g. when running heroics. In unlimited rage scenarios filling any Shield Slam cooldown time with Devastate will be more successful as far as threat is concerned.

This also means that I would not recommend the Glyph of Revenge anymore, as Glyph of Devastate is a lot better. The faster you get your Sunder stack to 5, the more threat you can frontload. This is especially important in such threat-sensitive fights as Malygos, Hodir and Twin Val’kyr where your DPS will receive big damage buffs.

I highly recommend everyone who’s remotely interested in numbers to plug their stats and talents into the spreadsheet and then have it all laid out there. Good stuff.

As you can tell, I made the decision to schedule a Trial of the Crusader raid just to see how we would do. We had been there before when only Beasts and Jaraxxus were available, and we had struggled with the Beasts quite a bit. But yesterday we just breezed through. Yes, compared to Ulduar bosses, ToC is pretty relaxed. None of the fights has the intensity that I connect to our firstkills of any of the Keepers in Ulduar. The only fights we struggled with were Faction Champions, which is an encounter that fills me with rage. I don’t PvP, so it was very difficult for me as raid leader to suggest any working strategy. We were facing the pretty unpleasant combo of resto shaman, resto druid, shadowpriest, arms warrior, retribution paladin and warlock. It took us forever trying to figure out how to get the healers down, but the first time we got both of them down, the fight was ours. I was busy keeping the arms warrior under control, which was not as easy as it sounds in theory. HATE BLADESTORM! Ugh.

The Twin Val’kyr fight was two-shot, I kinda liked it, but I also thought it was somewhat confusing. Anub’arak took us like four or five tries learning it, but we steadily progressed through it, and thus, 2.5 hours after the start of our first full ToC raid, we cleared. Go us!

As is par for the course, there was not a single tank drop in sight, but our casters got to ooooh and aaah about shiny drops. Most raid members got a drop, which is always nice. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean full-time ToC now for us, next week it’s back to Ulduar. That gives me time to figure out how I can permanently weave ToC into our raid schedule without crippling our Ulduar progress. That one boss has got to fall, you know?

In my current raid gear, I broke 34k health unbuffed yesterday. That was a real high for me. We’re doing great. I have cleared ToC-10, VoA-10 and Onyxia-10, all this week. Our raid is pretty damn successful. It’s a fabulous feeling. Go go DotH.

We didn’t have the time to try Yogg-Saron after learning the Vezax encounter and unfortunately this week had reduced raiding time, so that Mimiron is still up. I have decided that I would rather not extend the ID if Mimiron’s still up, because we will need all the time in the world for Yogg-Saron. My original plan was to down Y-S first before moving on to the next raiding tier, but in this weirdly non-linear raiding world, this might not be what’s best for us. People are eager for the shiny higher ilevel loot that ToC has to offer, and I think given our skill set, we should be able to go ToC 5/5 very soon. We’ve only been there once, in the second week, and managed to down both bosses, so if we can get past Faction Champions, I think we’ll have this. But you know what? It doesn’t feel right to me. Yogg-Saron still lives and is sending his foul tentacles of evil out in the world, and I won’t be done with Ulduar until he’s down.

I am still pretty enamored with Ulduar over-all, it’s a beautiful raid with diverse boss encounters. My probably least favorite encounter is Freya, but that’s because after, what, four kills of her we are still struggling with the *%*!$&$§& elementals wave. We must be doing something elementally (haha) wrong. Once we get the first of those waves down, we kill her, but getting there is making me go gray even earlier. One mob always goes down earlier, comes back and messes everything up. Aaaargh. The Freya encounter always manages to make two things happen: I get really frustrated and I feel like a crappy raid leader.

I enjoy the new Onyxia encounter, but this weekend made the mistake of trying it with 2 healers, which pretty much backfired on me. I felt like a wet loaf of bread, squishy like a clothie. That did not go so well. Again, it’s somewhat hard to find out where in progression this encounter might be based. Lootwise, beyond Ulduar, but not in difficulty in terms of the encounter.

We’ve recently run into a new problem, and the officers of my guild are currently working on a solution, or rather bridge. As a new 80, it gets more and more difficult (and at the same time easier) to get into recent raid content. It requires determination and pretty much a gear plan to get up there for Ulduar and beyond. We used to run Naxxramas in off-weeks, but that pretty soon turned into farm badge runs for alts instead of introducing newer 80s to raids. It’s going to be interesting to find a solution, but we have a game plan and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes. I am interested in hearing how other guilds handle bringing newer 80s up to speed, so please share.

In some more personal gear accomplishments, I finally managed to a) save up enough Emblems of Triumph to get the Shoulderguards of Enduring Order that are such a significant upgrade and b) I snagged T8 shoulders and gloves in the recent Ulduar raid, so that I can now face encounters like Mimiron wearing the 4pc set for the incredible bonus. Of course, I now always have to make the decision of when to use the T8 gear, in which encounter, so I should really look into that. I am a bit sad I am getting the bonus via wearing the shoulders, when my new EoT shoulders are so superior. Hopefully I can get the legs very soon, via Hodir or Emalon, so I can ditch the shoulders again. And now totally gratuitous, a current look at Kadomi in her orc glory:

   

On day 1, we progressed very smoothly through Ulduar, downing FL, XT, Ignis, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Hodir and Thorim in 3 hours. That’s 8 bosses, 6 of them one-shots, and the two keepers being two-shot. We had an annoying bug on Thorim. We breezed through the gauntlet, I jumped down into the Arena, ready to pick up Thorim, he jumped down as well and despawned. What gives? Very annoying. I finally managed to score a little bit more Ulduar loot, getting Legacy of Thunder off Thorim. Woot!

On day 2, we started with Razorscale, which was extremely confusing. I have never seen so many Sentinels show up in my life. From there we moved to Freya, who really gave us more difficulties than I thought possible. We are still struggling with the Elementals, consistently downing them at the same time is hard. I must read up on strategies for that, because the rest of the fight is really a breeze, it’s only the two waves of elementals that cause us problems.

And then it was time for Mimiron, who I had never main-tanked. The first two tries were wipes that I caused. I did not realize the first Plasma Blast is so early and was too slow with Shield Walling. The second time, Shock Blast ate me. From that point on, it was P4 just about every try. After six wipes, one of our raiders had to leave. We replaced her, and I set a time limit when we would call it. Those last two tries P1-P3 were a dream. P1 over after 2 Plasma Blasts. P2 done with only one Barrage. No issues whatsoever in P3. We almost had it, that perfect execution.

In the last try of the day, people stayed alive. I called out DPS switches, for our ranged to switch over to the middle, then the bottom. It was looking good. The Leviathan tank died, I picked it up, and tanked it, while continuously spell reflecting the Plasma Balls from the head. Two DPS went down, we had a battle rez, then another DPS death. Numbers were ticking down. I was too rattled to call out more switches, DPS intelligently did it on their own. First part went down, then the dreaded self-repair bar showed up and then, boom!

 
It was pretty deafening on Vent, and I squealed loudly too. I think this moment beats our Hex-Lord kill as favorite raiding moment for now. It was pretty amazing. I am so freaking proud. We don’t even raid every week (though we kinda have since the extended raid lock, more often than not), and it took us 19 pulls spread out over two different raids, to kill one of the two big challenges in Ulduar. Next week I expect us to down General Vezax, and then we’ll pay a visit to Yogg-Saron. I am so freaking excited.

 
We had a fabulous guest raider again, Naissa, who tanked in Ulduar for the first time ever, and did a fantastic job at it. She kindly posted more screenshots, and I totally want her computer. If that’s not some badass screenshots, I don’t know anything.

I will list several pieces of gear per slot. The top piece is your entryway into heroics, the second or third piece your gear progression.

Head:

• Tempered Titansteel Helm – buy in AH or bring the mats to a friendly blacksmith.
• Helm of the Crestfallen Challenger – Once you’re comfortable with tanking H ToC, this is what you should pick up next.
• Conqueror’s Siegebreaker Greathelm – buy this one last with 58 Emblems of Conquest, as the above is superior until the 4pc T8 bonus.

Neck:

• Titanium Earthguard Chain – buy in AH or bring mats to a friendly Jewelcrafter
• Shard of the Crystal Forest – excellent 19 badge purchase

Shoulders:

• Crusader’s Square Pauldrons – common as dirt BoE drop in CoS (reg or heroic), which seems to be the daily on my server just about every day. Should be able to pick this up cheap anywhere.
• Regal Aurous Shoulderplates – lovely shoulders from H ToC

Cloak:

• Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions – Honored with Wyrmrest Accord, your companion for a long time
• Platinum Mesh Cloak – still a valuable buy at 25 Emblems of Valor

Chest:

• Breastplate of the Solemn Council – Revered with Wyrmrest Accord, which should take you right to…
• Conqueror’s Siegebreaker Breastplate – earn 58 Emblems of Conquest, buy it, hug it, gem it, love it

Wrist:

• Tempered Saronite Bracers – This is our problem slot, there is very very little selection. Starting out with the crafted bracers should be sufficient to get you to…
• Bindings of Dark Will – in H CoS, a fairly common drop off the 2nd boss
• Bracers of the Herald – H OK, the best you can get outside of a raid instance.

Gloves:

• Mercy’s Hold – fabulous gloves from reg ToC, well worth running this until you receive it.
• Gauntlets of the Royal Watch – a sweet deal at 28 Emblems of Conquest

Waist:

• Waistguard of the Risen Knight – common BoE drop in H DTK, should be cheap.
• Ancient Aligned Girdle – a direct upgrade in H A-N
• Shieldwarder Girdle – available for 28 Emblems of Conquest, unless you want to get yourself the crafted…
• Indestructible Plate Girdle – made by a friendly blacksmith, mats might be a bit steep

Legs:

• Legguards of Abandoned Fealty – from reg ToC, absolutely fabulous starter pants, and should be more than sufficient for raiding. I raided Ulduar-10 in worse!
• Wyrmguard Legplates – a lot of item budget is wasted on block rating and SBV, but these are the highest ilevel legs outside of raid instances. I personally would not purchase them if you have the above, and wait for a raid drop.

Feet:

• Boots of Heartfelt Repentance – yet another strong drop from Trial of the Champions. These boots will take you a long way.
• Spiked Deathdealers – crafted by blacksmiths, cost a pretty penny, but are most excellent

Rings:

• Titanium Earthguard Ring – fabulous ring, crafted, save up some gold and profit
• Signet of the Accord – BoE drop in Obsidian Sanctum-10, should be up in the AH or…
• Keystone Great-Ring – if you’re still def-capped anyhow, drops in H Drak’tharon Keep
• Alternatively any of the blue tanking rings from heroics. Eventually replace one of the above with…
• Mark of the Relentless – beautifully itemized ring from H ToC, just no defense on it.

Trinkets:

• Seal of the Pantheon – regular Halls of Lightning. Should it just not drop, have Dabiri’s Enigma or Adamantine Figurine as standby.
• The Black Heart – the sacred grail of stamina, available in regular ToC

Main Hand:

• Wanted: Ragemane’s Flipper – start out with any of the quest rewards as per race and personal taste.
• Axe of the Sen’jin Protector or Teldrassil Protector – if you enjoy the Argent Tournament Dailies, these are available for 25 Champion’s Seals.
• Peacekeeper Blade – replacing the H UP sword as best available tanking weapon from heroics, this vibrating turkey knife is where it’s at. Stuff a def gem in it if necessary. Available in H ToC.

Shield:

• Titansteel Shield Wall - crafted by blacksmiths
• Royal Crest of Lordaeron – with a lead on avoidance, this drops from H CoS and is still your best bet outside of raids

Ranged:

• Armor Plated Combat Shotgun – crafted by engineers, and still the best in the slot for us.

Before anyone mentions that I did not list any of the Emblem of Triumph upgrades, they’re not the purpose of this post and I greatly recommend the ever fabulous Tankingtips.com to help you spend your hard-earned EoTs.

We pushed to get to Mimiron again last raid, but as we didn’t down Thorim on the first day due to lack of time, we didn’t have enough time to tackle Mimiron on the 2nd day. On top of that, I was there on my death knight, as DPS, and all the tank drops that never happened before were raining down on the guild. We did four bosses on day 2, Razorscale, Ignis, Thorim and Freya. Four bosses, four tank drops. Two pieces went to an offspec-tank, the MH went to a tank from another guild who had filled in to help us out, and the trinket went to our main tank who after the raid informed me that she was going to gquit. I kinda deflated, because losing a tank is a huge deal in DotH. Another tank had just faction-transferred out, and that leaves a big gaping hole for our Ulduar progression.

I extended the raid ID, had a full roster for Mimiron attempts, with an excellent lineup. But our second tank from outside the guild was sick, one of the healers dropped out, one of the DPS didn’t show. We tried to fill the raid, to no avail, and so yesterday I had to call a raid completely, for the first time ever since Zul’Aman. It’s likely going to be like this for a while. All I can do is to just keep on organizing raids, hope we can eventually get another tank to fill the second slot, and tank my heart out.

On a more positive note, Naissa transferred her priest to Bronzebeard and she’s been filling a healer spot in our last raid, for her first real visit to Ulduar. It was pretty exciting to show her how cool Ulduar is, I am not tired of that raid yet.

I am pretty much done gearing Kadomi up with Emblems of Conquest, that didn’t take very long. At the moment I run the heroic daily every day that I can squeeze it in, for my 2 Emblems of Triumph. My new shoulders are 14 days away, I can do it! I already spent 35 of them on my new spiffy ring.

As I usually fill in as DPS instead of healer these days when I am not tanking, my DK is now next in the gearing up process. Combined with that, I am still working on making frost dual-wielding DPS work for me. I like the spec, I enjoy the playstyle, and I feel it requires a lot more skill to make it work, compared to the ’set in stone’ rotation of a Blood DK. On trash my results are very mixed, without Rime procs I feel pretty gimp compared to blood. Thanks to the Heart Strike nerf in 3.2.2, this will soon no longer be the case, as blood will no longer be so OP on trash pulls. I did a full Naxx clear with my guild and kept switching back and forth between blood and frost. Patchwerk saw me at 4595 DPS, which I think you could call successful. My eyes are shining at the thought of what I’ll be able to do with some T8 gear on instead of my T7, and with a better off-hand than my blue Ebon Blade sword. Exciting.

Not only is this name made of win (yup, sucker for German references, German language represent!) but Linedan is posting one of the most solid guide series out there, how to level from 1-80 as protection warrior. He’s basically doing what I wanted to do and kinda fell flat on, he’s leveling another warrior, to show you how it’s done protection-style. Leveling builds and guides are still really popular, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better one out there.

So get the good stuff from Linedan and add him to your prot warrior blogrolls, well worth the read.