1. If you play(ed) Dungeons and Dragons, what class would you pick? Also, if you have played or still play, which version do you prefer? 3.0,3.5,4.0 etc.

It’s actually been years since I last played D&D. The last version I played was 3.5. As for characters, I’ve always leaned towards playing melee classes, so either ranger, rogue or warrior. Rangers are probably my D&D favorite.

2. How do you generate AOE threat with disparate mobs? I’m thinking about (for example) the waves in HoR. DKs can taunt, DG, and silence to bring in ranged mobs. How do you do it as a warrior?

As a disclaimer, I am not the best HoR tank. I tank it for friends only, and even then I will curse a lot. The waves in the last part get increasingly more difficult to tank as warrior. Heroic Throw has a 1 minute cooldown, so you can use it once in the 2nd wave and once in the last wave and have to figure out other means to handle those mobs in the first place. Definitely spec into Gag Order so that Heroic Throw will silence and then bring the casters to you. You can also Charge/Intercept the casters, but you do risk that the abominations will vomit all over the melee in your group.

Ideally you have people with interrupts. Taunt casters, spell reflect to gain aggro on them, and if you then have someone help you with an interrupt, they should wander over into your Thunderclap/Cleave range. If you do not have interrupts in the party, you will need to head there yourself and Shield Bash a cast, then cluster the mobs together again.

Another example for disparate mobs that I have seen tanks struggling with would be the two large groups of casters in Forge of Souls. As warriors this is actually easy to tank for us, as long as you can grab initial aggro. Charging the Soul Horror in the Center, Thunderclapping and from thereon using Spell Reflect every cooldown will let you tank this fight comfortably. If you lose one of the casters in the back, you can taunt, Intercept, Heroic Throw or head over for Shield Bashing. Mobility is our advantage, so don’t be shy with charging from mob to mob, interrupting as you can and send those shadow bolts right back at them. Yes, unlike HoR I actually love tanking FoS.

For further writing I have done about clustering a pull, see this entry of mine.

3. When someone writes an e-mail to you, do you prefer being addressed as “Kadomi”, or is using your real first name permissible?

I am not hiding my name, it’s mentioned on my About page, but when it comes to WoW I mostly identify with my name as Kadomi. It’s just who I am in WoW.

4. I would imagine that you’ve been fluent in English for some time now. Even so, do you ever encounter a piece of English slang that confounds you for a moment when you first hear it?

I pay for my WoW subscription as staff of a bilingual helpdesk, so I am surrounded by all sorts of native speakers who work in my office, mostly Brits. They will regularly use terms that I do not understand, so it’s always an experience here. It doesn’t even need to be slang to confound me. My SO has a huge, extensive vocabulary and in her verbose description she will use terms I have never heard before. So yeah, my English’s definitely not perfect.

5. How easy would you say you are to be friends with?

That’s a can of worms! I would describe myself as an extremely loyal, caring friend, but I do need time to warm up to people. I am blunt and do not have the ability to sugar-coat my words convincingly which has often led to headbutting with people. A diplomat, I am not. If you can deal with all that, it’s definitely not that hard to be friends with me at all.

6. Xtian913 wants to know: Kadomi, I know you said in your blog that your SO stopped playing WoW, but… why? I know everyone needs a little time off from the game, but so many years of enjoying it, why just stop?

When I read this question to my SO, she thought I was shitting her and that I set her up, but no, it’s a real question! Her answer remains the same as it did when she quit: ‘I got bored of pressing the right buttons in the right order for hours.’ She says she doesn’t think WoW sucks, but that she is just bored of it. I’ll continue to woo her back for Cataclysm, but chances are really really slim at this point. I think she said only riding snails could bring her back. Hello Blizzard, think you could use those snails models for mounts instead of non-combat pets? I would love you forever!

And that covers all questions for now. Hope you enjoyed.

Yesterday I got an e-mail alerting me that I had gotten a new question, which reminded me that I have this account still. Guess what, I found 13 questions, most of them fairly old. Nevertheless, you deserve your answers, so this is part 1 of a 2-part series of me responding to the questions!

1. What motivates you in WoW? Is it the gear, in-game friends, progression, trying to reach tanking perfection, etc etc., asked by an anonymous reader

I am a very goal oriented WoW player who prefers group content of any kind. Gear is definitely nice, but ultimately a means to an end, to push further in the game. I love progression, but it has to be with my friends, which is why I love the tightly knit 10-man raid environment the most. I am very much a perfectionist and have quit playing characters that I feel I cannot achieve the high standards I set for myself. So, as summary, my top motivation in WoW is to kick some serious ass with my friends and experience all PvE content.

2. Why do you enjoy tanking? What have been your favourite encounters in WotLK?, from another anonymous reader

That’s a vaaaast question and will be answered in my warrior post for the tanking series I started back in March/April. I still intend to finish it. So I will respond to the encounters part instead. I think my favorite encounter vote goes to *drumrolls* Mimiron! I thought it was a well-thought encounter that was complex to master, made you feel like you were going insane, especially in P4. But so much fun! Definitely a WotLK highlight. I pretty much am a fan of most Ulduar encounters, though Freya can go DIAF. I thought they all had some interesting mechanics, and it helped that the instance was beautiful.

ICC is not quite as inspiring as Ulduar to me. Of the encounters in there so far I would say that I like Putricide most. It has the complexity that I expect as wing endboss, requires good coordination, and then goes crazy in P3. Besides, it offers the offtank a unique role as abomination that is far superior to many other fights. My thoughts on off-tanking in ICC deserve a post of its own.

3. Your posts on gear for new 80′s are great. What do you think about Heroic level talent specs & glyphs for new Warrior tanks, i.e. pre Raid builds? Everyone’s gotta start somewhere , another anonymous question.

I did actually post about builds way back in April 2009, when dual specs were released. In my mind, you either use the threat build including Deep Wounds, or you use a more defensive build for progression raiding. For someone who’s a fresh 80, Deep Wounds all the way. As new tank you’ll probably struggle with AoE threat, so pick up Cleaving, Shockwave and Sunder Armor, and Thunder Clap is a must as minor.

Soon, we’ll have vastly different talent trees, and I am looking forward to finding out what will work best in Cataclysm.

4. Are you going to roll a werewolf or a goblin in the expac? asked by Jenny

For the Horde! There’s no question for me, I want to play a goblin, very badly. Ever since I watched Gravity’s goblin DK video, I want me one of those. It doesn’t hurt that all reports I have heard so far indicate that the goblin starting zones are fantastic fun. I am actually transferring my level 70 rogue off Bronzebeard, to make room for the future goblin hunter. I really need more character slots.

I will eventually roll a worgen as well, but likely only to play the start zone. I don’t have room on Bronzebeard for a 2nd alliance character, and I do not know any other alliance players US-side. I know a lot of people are very excited about the worgen, but they don’t actually appeal to me that much.

5. On the ‘Bioware spectrum’, when starting a new single-player RPG, do you usually play light side/paragon/good or dark side/renegade/evil?, asked anonymously.

Bioware has been for years the only crack that gets me away from WoW. I have played KotOR, Jade Empire, both Mass Effects and of course Dragon Age. I always go for the paragon side somehow. The glowier the halo, the happier I am. I always peter out when I try to play the dark side. But I owe it to myself to complete Mass Effect 2 as a badass renegade sometime in the near future. I am almost more excited about Mass Effect 3 than Dragon Age 2.

6. Now that you have tried both, what’s harder in end game – healing or tanking?

I think every role in WoW is equally hard in end-game. To be a capable tank, healer or DPS, it’s all challenging, to do it right. I know that people tend to say DPS is easily replaced, but I don’t find that’s true at all. Progression falters when DPS is lacking, just as much as it stalls when tanks have low health pools or healers can’t keep people up. I personally am still more intimidated by healing, but I also find it extremely fun, just as much as tanking.

7. There is a lot of discussion on WoW becoming too easy. What are your thoughts? Also, do you think there will be a gap between now and Cataclysm where people are milling around in-game because everyone already has T9/T10 gear?

I firmly believe that dungeon design dumbed down a lot of elements in WotLK. A complete lack of scaling has made heroics laughable since Ulduar, so for almost 1.5 years now. As tank, I miss careful pulls, marking kill order, assigning crowd control options. Even before we all started outgearing heroics, people had lost interest in that, because they had AoE buttons and tanks were suddenly able to keep large groups of mobs on them.

As a 10-man raider, I don’t feel WoW has become too easy. Naxxramas was an easy raid, Ulduar was awesome, ToC is this weird place that takes as long as a TBC 5-man would have taken, and Icecrown Citadel has some great encounters.

This question was actually asked 5 months ago, and it should be pretty obvious that a lot of us are now milling around in game, because almost all content is done. My guild needs LK and Ruby Sanctum still, but after that, there’s only hardmodes left and that’s not really new content. I have no idea what we’ll all do, aside from leveling more and more alts.

And that’s it for today, I will continue this on Tuesday. If you want to add your own questions, please do!

What happened since the last posts in April? Severe tank burn-out, is what. I basically made a promise to myself when I started blogging that I would take a positive approach to WoW and my chosen class, because there’s already a ton of negativity out there in the so-called WoW community. But back then in April, when the other three guild tanks posted their takes on why they love tanking like a girl, I was not in the correct mindspace to tell you why I love being a warrior tank, because at the time I didn’t love it.

It’s now four months later, and I am back to doing what I love, tanking for my guild. Remember that series of tanking posts? Our druid disappeared into the nether, without so much as a word of goodbye, and thus our tank numbers were down to 3. Our paladin can often not make our raid times, so instead of chain-healing it up, I went back to tanking, and fell in love with it all over again.

I generally have a strong dislike of tanking LFD groups in full pugs, because I have been treated like crap from people who only care about speed and their e-peen. On the other hand, on my healer alts I have met so many arrogant tank douchebags that I can relate to some general contempt people have for tanks. Anything from tanks needing all greens as their ‘fee’ for tanking to guys who will insult their groups, feeling entitled from their 30 second queues. I probably have seen it all.

This only makes me appreciate the good tanks more. The calm tanks who will keep an eye on healer mana, especially lesser geared healers. The ones who will spare a friendly word to the rest of the group and just do their job. People like us, we’re still out there. And so I am back.

I am excited about Cataclysm. I hope that it will bring about some changes to the game, like the return of CC, a reduced pace, an end to the zerg rushes that are all everyone knows at this point in WoW. I am not going to dig into the prot changes yet, because things are so in flux, ever-changing. But I have a good feeling about Cataclysm.

Game-wise, I am now 11/12 in Icecrown Citadel-10. I just spent my first six hours wiping on LK phase 2. So far phase 2 has been the brick wall we throw ourselves against, but our work has only just started. I have tanked every fight in there on my warrior, and healed every fight on my shaman. I have six level 80s now, but I only actively play 3 of them at a time. At this moment it’s my warrior, my shaman and my latest 80, my druid.

I have to finish leveling my paladin to 80, she’s been at 78 for months now. When I was burnt out on tanking, I was also burnt out at the thought of doing the tank gear grind on a second character. But I will, eventually. Cataclysm is still far away, and WotLK’s greatest failure is that there is not enough to do, aside from ‘level to 80 and get the character geared’, over and over. I bet that the number of people with characters in endgame has never been higher than today. A common complaint is that there’s nothing to do aside from raiding, and when you have a guild with only six hours of raiding a week, at most, there’s not much reason to be on inbetween.

So here I am, ready to tell you more stuff about life as a prot warrior, ready to share my bucket list, my general view of tanking in WotLK and whatever else comes to mind. Feels good to be back. I hope a few of you will still be here to read it.

I started playing WoW the first week it was released. Almost right from the beginning I chose to play a healer. Throughout the years I’ve been playing I became very comfortable with healing, and also fairly decent at dps when I wasn’t healing. But, there was one last role out there taunting me (hyuk) – the ever elusive tanking role.

Tanking had always intimidated me, and seemed like it would always be out of my reach. I am a healer! I don’t take damage, and tanking is HARD. I always had a close bond with the tanks I would heal, but I felt like I would never be able to do the job very well myself. So, I never gave it a chance.

Time went on, WotLK hit, and I continued healing. I still enjoyed healing, but I started feeling like I needed to find something more challenging in the game. I knew that it was time to swallow my fear and give tanking a shot finally.

The thing is, I didn’t plan for Lashe to be my tanky character. I was just playing her for fun, leveling her with my brother. I had never wanted to play Lashe much outside of the realm of leveling. I had heard all the negativity surrounding the Death Knight class and I had always refused to play the “popular class”, or to play the class that others may look down on.

But, I fell in love. Everything about the DK class was so exciting, I loved everything about it. The runes, the diseases, how all the spells worked with the diseases, the self-healing… everything. Every single time I played Lashe, I fell more and more in love with her and her play style.

At one point, someone in guild was putting together a group run of Underbog and was looking for a tank. I figured I might as well give it a shot since they were having a hard time finding one. I had already decided I wanted to tank.. why not try it on Lashe? I scrounged around the AH quickly, made a quick Frost tank spec, and asked for DK tanking tips from my guildies on my way in:

“Keep DnD down!”

That’s pretty much all the tips I got, haha. So, I kept DnD down, and spastic-ly pressed buttons and it was one of the most noob experiences of my WoW life. But I had fun and knew that this was just the beginning.

When I hit 80, I felt added pressure to be “perfect” so that I wouldn’t be lumped in with the the DK’s out there who gave us a bad name. So I was constantly researching, making sure I was doing everything correctly, and tanking heroics whenever I felt the courage. Slowly but surely I finally got up to the point where I could tank raids.

My first raid tanking experience was with DotH. I tanked Ulduar alongside Kadomi, and she made me feel so comfortable.. Giving me lots of tips on how to pull certain groups, whether to face them away from the group or not, etc. I was so nervous going into that raid cause I wanted to do well and was convinced they would ban me from raids forever if I made any mistakes, ha. But the raid went well, I didn’t fall on my face, and it was the start of a BEAUTIFUL relationship! *music starts*

I am currently one of the progression tanks for our ICC runs, and I’ve really settled into my role! I no longer get stressed out about tanking raids, my neck doesn’t have a permanent cramp like it used to while tanking (I was so tense feeling like I would wipe the raid at any moment!). It’s been a blast, and I am having fun discovering new bosses and mechanics with my guild, and working to master Death Knight tanking more and more as we move along.

Now that I’ve beaten a long and flowery path around the bush, I will get down to the whole point of this blog post! Why do I like Death Knight tanking?

Honestly, I could go on and on about it. I love the micromanagement of the diseases and runes. I love that there are 3 tank specs that can suit everyone’s different tanking styles or raid needs (until Cataclysm hits anyway!). I loooove the proactive cooldowns. I have gotten quite addicted to my cooldowns and love hitting them every chance I get. It adds a whole new level to tanking for me: planning ahead in fights and trying to time my cooldowns to help with burst damage etc. Blood’s self-healing goes right along with the same feeling I have for my cooldowns. I try hard to time my heals with spike damage so that I can hopefully help the healers out even a little bit. I love Frost’s AOE (another thing I will miss in Cata). I love having DeathGrip so that I can pull those pesky casters to me!

I also love that I am not a master at my class, I am always learning something new and am constantly working to improve. It is definitely the challenge I was looking for when I was thinking about tanking, and I can’t imagine going back.

The first time I walked into a raid to tank was in the days of vanilla WoW, for Zul’Gurub. I was tanking the snake boss on my warrior… and… it was awesome! I had so much fun taking the hits instead of dishing them out for once, and needing to use my abilities to keep the boss’ attention on me and to stay alive was pleasantly different!

Now, that wasn’t actually my entrance into tanking as a main spec, but that feeling stayed by me and it was something I wanted to experience again. That didn’t come until months later, well into The Burning Crusade. I told myself I needed to finally make a horde character that I didn’t abandon at level 20 and see what life was like on that side of the fence.

Today, that character is Shiawase, my blood elf paladin. At a glance, you wouldn’t think that she could hold up against a boss like Onyxia. She’s so tiny! Surely the dragon could just eat her? Thankfully, Shiawase has holy magic on her side. At least, that’s how I explain it.

What I enjoy so much as a paladin in a raid is that tanking doesn’t have to be my only job. I have a wide variety of abilities that are useful in particular situations – many of which come up regularly over the duration of a raid. Hand of Salvation for that Arms Warrior (because, bless their aggro-loving souls, they have no threat drop short of death); Lay on Hands the other tank when her health drops frighteningly low during an enrage; Blessing of Protection on that healer that attracted a couple too many adds.

Something I enjoy is feeling like my character is useful. I leveled up a druid in vanilla WoW so I could help heal when we were low on healers. I play an Arms warrior that gives some useful physical damage buffs (bonus: more fun to play than Fury (imo haha)). My paladin offers tanking to a guild that needs it – but with it I also have an arsenal of abilities that are unique to paladins that I can use to help my raid and maybe even save it from a wipe.

While tanking… I can multitask. That’s pretty awesome! It isn’t only related to raiding either… while doing heroics, I can easily tab out and chat in AIM since I have so much AoE threat I’ll probably never lose aggro…

…okay actually I’m sort of kidding on that last one.

But seriously, heroics on my paladin are a breeze, and that makes them fun. I have a warrior and her offspec is Protection, but you pretty much have to pay me (or be my sister and guilt me) to tank a pug on her. Just thinking about it makes me all stressed out and we’re not even at the point yet where none of the DPS are bothering to assist. My paladin takes the stress factor away. I’m consecrating, Hammer of the Righteous-ing, and Seal of Vengeance-ing myself to the second spot (well, sometimes the first) on the damage meters most of the time and I enjoy it because staying on top of threat doesn’t feel like a chore.

I originally leveled Shiawase to see what the Horde thing was all about. I decided I wanted to try out tanking. At level 80 I bounced between three specs, had rubbish gear for all of them, and didn’t know what to do with myself until finally I said to myself, “Hey you know, my guild needs tanks and you are halfway there. You liked this in the last expansion. Let’s do this thing.” I haven’t looked back since. It’s a good thing that Shiawase has that holy magic to protect her slight form from being immediately gobbled up by a dragon, because I intend to have her on the front lines, tanking the biggest and baddest bosses, for as long as I am playing World of Warcraft!

Today I bring you part I of this collaboration. Let me introduce you to our newest Daughters of the Horde tank. She’s only recently joined us, leveled to 80 and went off into the world of pug tanking right away. She then joined us in Trial of the Crusader and now Icecrown, to tank bosses WITH HER FACE! It is my pleasure to introduce you to Beisenberger.

Tank Like a Resto Druid

My love affair with the druid began nearly 3 years ago. In fact, it was only moments after I installed World of Warcraft for the first time on my geriatric, hand-me-down computer (a PC that could be classified alongside such technical marvels as the EASY-BAKE Oven) that I had zoned into Mulgore on my very first toon..the bipedal cow. Er…I mean the Tauren Druid.

Life was good. In my state of newbness, I achieved level 10 through an attempt to bludgeon every mob with my staff. Needless to say, I encountered several trips to rediscover my corpse. But after these many out of body experiences, something marvelous happened: Bear Form.

Immediately, my world changed. The once ‘laughable’ love taps from my melee weapon turned into deadly mauls, and the once deadly beatings from the enemy turned into laughable love taps. Clearly, things were going well.

As I leveled the Druid, I experienced all 4 specs offered from this amazingly fun hybrid class. When I reached end game, I decided, “Why don’t I heal for a while until I’m more comfortable with raiding.” Little did I know that ‘a while’ would turn into almost 2 years!

Though I do enjoy healing, it seems that when a person becomes comfortable in a certain role, they forget that sometimes, it would be nice to have a mangling, swipe-mashing, BADASS BEAR. (Especially when you had a particularly awful day at work! Just come home and…RAWR!Slash!MAUL!Grrr!. Therapy.)

You see, tanking in end game was always something I ‘wanted to try’ when I ‘had the time’. And aside from leaving the safety zone of a role I’d played for years…as a female player, there was also a hesitation to fulfill the most brawny role in the game. Melee and tanking classes don’t seem to be quite as appealing as some of the more ‘girl friendly’ classes that WoW offers. And I’m not just talking about male Bloodelves here, I’m pretty much referencing any class whose strong points rest in ‘mind over matter’. (Or anyone that wears a dress in place of armor.)

Let’s face it. On a global scale, women are not renowned for their ability to bench press 200 lbs and smash beer cans with their foreheads. This being said, I think there is a grave fallacy when the classic female mind first studies a tank.

“Ew, he’s going to hit me? IN THE FACE??. And what is this? A hammer? I have to pound that into some dude’s ribcage? No thanks, that’s pretty barbaric.”

In this way, women misjudge the tank. Tanks do not actually symbolize strength in an aggressive, physical way. They are not bullies, they are not self-centered. A tank symbolizes endurance. They do not attack to harm…but they do protect others at all costs.

To endure and protect. Are those masculine traits?
I don’t think so.

In fact, one of the most feminine characteristics in the world happens to be endurance.

It is the cornerstone of a woman’s ability to overcome any odds by her sheer willpower. To give birth, to endure that pain. To raise her children, to comfort the people she loves when they are grieving, to stand up to men who are bigger, stronger, more powerful then they…to place others joys and sorrows above their own. To lose and to live on. To preserve life.

Protecting others at the cost of oneself? I don’t think I have to sell that point at all. It is ‘clear as day’ feminine.

So, If all this is true, how did these brazen, manly claims come about on an overtly girl-tastic role?

I can’t tell you that. But, I can tell you that I’ll have a blast figuring it out as I perfect my mangling, swipe-mashing, BADASS BEAR TANK on WoW.

I didn’t have time to play yesterday and had a lot of issues with the loading screen boss, but I managed to run VoA with my shaman and then test the warrior changes.

As quick summary, here are the changes that affect protection warriors:

• Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%.
• Thunderclap: This ability now counts as a ranged attack, granting it double damage on critical strikes instead of 150% and ranged miss chance, and still cannot be dodged or parried.
• Improved Revenge: This talent can no longer trigger a stun, and instead increases damage done by Revenge by 30/60% and causes Revenge to strike an additional target.
• Vitality: Now boosts Stamina by 3/6/9%, up from 2/4/6%. Strength and expertise benefits have not changed.

Now, I don’t love every change. I am still torn about Improved Revenge. It kicked ass in the one heroic I ran yesterday, but this will do absolutely nothing for prot warrior DPS on bosses. Admittedly, the old Imp Revenge didn’t either as 99% of all bosses were immune to the stun. But it would have been nice to get something like that.

So how does this play in action? I queued up for a random with some guildies last night and we got H Halls of Lightning. First thumbs up: I was finally able to break 40k health unbuffed, sitting at 40.8k now. This is a big deal for me as I had been hovering at 39k for weeks now, well behind the other tanks in our guild. Yay!

I lost aggro to the pug warlock on maybe two pulls, the rest was smooth sailing. Damage was definitely up for me, hitting 3-4k most pulls. Revenge hits like a truck, like a huge truck. I think I giggled a little when my crit tracker displayed the delicious line: New Crit Record! Revenge hits Loken for 10383! Yes, you read that correctly, it broke 10k multiple times on that run. Now imagine this with full raid buffs. Muahahaha. The cleave effect of Revenge was also pretty nice, and will definitely help in heroics and AoE tanking. But it’s not enough to make us stop spamming Cleave and Thunderclap.

Last night I felt pretty awesome tanking. Zipping from group to group happily. I love Charge and Warbringer, it’s the ability I miss most on my paladin. Nothing will ever beat Charge.

I am not sure if I’ll tank or heal in ICC-10 this week, but I think the changes will not really affect my raid tanking DPS much at all. I will still be FAIL on Festergut, a fight that I really hate. When it’s not my turn to tank, I am in Battle Stance, lolrending, applying sunders and waiting for my turn. The buff to Revenge won’t do anything for me in that fight because the mechanics won’t allow Revenge procs. We will still be the weakest class to bring in that fight.

We are still struggling on fights in the Plagueworks, often held back by our DPS output, and so every little point of DPS I can add matters.

TL;DR summary: Revenge hits like a truck, Imp Revenge is a lot of AoE goodness, heroics DPS definitely up, so bring back Revenge to your action bars. How this affects raid DPS remains to be seen, but it’s a good change. Let’s go kick some ass now.

Things I have done since I last posted:

• leveled a mage from 54 to 80, getting her fully geared in ToC-10 gear in alt runs – never has leveling and getting geared for raiding been as easy as today. I was practically able to buy my first piece of T9 the moment I hit 80. But I learned a valuable lesson. DPS isn’t anywhere as easy as it looks like, and to contribute fully it still takes skill. My DPS instincts are somewhat lacking, so it’s an interesting experiment.
• ran VoA-10 and 25 just about every week on my shaman, and VoA-10 on Kadomi – my shaman got her T10 kilt off Toravon-10, which made me very happy, because 2pc T10 for resto shamans is hot! Also, it gave me an opportunity to have spectral shoveltusks, who doesn’t love that? Kadomi has been less lucky, because I only got the DPS legs from Toravon? Is this a sign? But no, it can’t be. Prot warrior for life, yo!
• started Ulduar hardmodes – it’s long been my dream to go back to my favorite WotLK raid instance and try hardmodes. Sure, we outgear them like crazy now. But they’re still fun! So far we have gotten Heartbreaker, I choose you, Steelbreaker, I could say that this cache was rare and Lose your illusion. This ‘only’ leaves Freya and Mimiron hard-modes for Algalon. I am looking forward to going back and trying. I had a blast. I did go as healer, and actually scored an upgrade from Hodir hardmode. I had never seen Ice Layered Barrier before, it’s a sweet piece of gear that is replacing gear I got from ToC-10. Crazy world.
• being 5/12 in ICC-10 – Icecrown is going somewhat strangely for us. We’ve only made it to Rotface once, and we got him to 4% on our first night. But we haven’t been able to get back to him, because we are really suffering from lack of sign-ups. Our staple healers are all MIA due to heavy attack of RL, our heavy hitter DPS was not around either. We are struggling far more in there than we really should, which is very disheartening. But we’ll keep at it. Not everyone needs to kill Arthas already, Cataclysm is far away.
• finally started leveling my alliance paladin again – Please meet Leala. She is a paladin, and she tanks like a girl. I think this was one of the hardest things for me to do in my time in WoW. I am such a proud defender of the warrior class, but something in me just broke. Months ago someone sent me an e-mail that they thought I should try a protection paladin because they felt I would have a lot to give to the world if I experienced that tanking style. So I sent the girl heirlooms, leveled her from 67 to 70 and went dual spec on her. My first week was spent panicking. She had barely 10k health unbuffed, not even def-capped for level 70, just a set of Cobalt gear and a crappy stamina/expertise sword I got as a quest reward. But I went ahead, and tanked and was flabbergasted. 5-man tanking as paladin is such a different experience from warrior tanking for me. It basically feels like relaxed, easy-going tanking in slow motion. Nothing could go possibly wrong. The only concern is mana. Where as warrior I still feel compelled to mark a kill order, it feels like it doesn’t matter. DPS not on my focus target? Eh, they’ll stay on me anyhow. My paladin is now almost 76, and I have tanked everything through VH. This makes me think I might want to give those other two classes a shot as well. My druid is languishing at 71, and I could easily go feral on her. I was a feral druid in TBC, and druids at the time felt very similar to how warriors play. My DK is only logged on for cutting gems, and I could grind some T9 tanking gear for her. But I don’t know about that yet, because I know DKs still get a lot of crap in PUGs. We shall see.
• trying to learn how not to be an officer – yeah yeah, I stepped down a while ago, as a combination of too much drama regarding a guild we used to be friends with, and general burnout. I just fear I am totally unable to let go. I still lead raids, I set up raid groups for the weekly quest every week, and I am dying to get things done, when it’s not really my job anymore. So either I will learn to let go, which would be awesome, or I might beg for them to take me back.
• learning how to play without my SO – my partner decided to call it quits with WoW in February. We had played WoW together since September 2005, and we were officers together from summer 2006 until she stepped down last year. Our Yogg-Saron kill was her last raid. Funny how something like this matters, but it does. The game has lost some of its shine, even though I still play a lot and we sometimes even butt heads because she’s bored when I raid. It was the two of us who busted our asses to make DotH start raiding in TBC. She inspired me to be a healer to heal her druid. I miss playing with. I miss talking about the game with her. I miss her min-maxing on her warlock when WoW was not boring to her. I wish there was a way I could magically find her some fun activity in WoW again. I miss you, Q.

So there you have it, the digest version. If you want to hear a lot of blabbering, you should follow me on Twitter. I should warn you all, I can get very ranting there. My guild has had some minor amounts of drama lately, usually caused by my German raging.

I also have a Formspring set up, a way that you can ask me anything, anonymously or not, and in the next couple of days I will go through my queue of questions I still have up. Feel free to ask me more!

Tomorrow, I will post about my impressions as tank in ICC-10, up to Festergut. It’s going to be a rant, be warned, but maybe that’ll entertain some of you.

A special thanks to all the concerned commenters and readers who sent e-mail. I am still here, and it feels good that I was missed. I am here to stay. Prot warrior for life!

• Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same.
• Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage.
• Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
• Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

Let’s look at them one after the other.

1: This will mean CB will likely be pushed out of my rotation and will be relegated to its previously use in TBC: to be used as stun and interrupt on trash or encounters such as Assembly of Iron. I don’t need it to supply threat, I used it for doing damage.

2. Another damage boost to Devastate means that I can pretty much ignore Revenge beyond a certain rage level. Revenge will still deliver the best rage to threat ratio, so at the start of an encounter, in heroics, or in situations where you rage-starved yourself, it’s useful. I am sure people will run threat parses soon, but Devastate spamming sounds more and more attractive.

3. I actually have no idea how this will affect me. It’s not like I have huge amounts of SBV stacked, or ArP in my tanking gear, so I have to test the numbers. At least it will be more threat. Let’s just hope the Devastate buff will compensate overall.

4. This nerf makes me sad, because it cuts into our PvE utility so much. It was incredibly useful in heroics and just felt right to me. Thank you Arena. Not.

As far as other non-warrior changes go, heroics will be simplified across the board, which still makes me long for a heroic heroic switch that must be hidden somewhere in the game. Blizzard, please, if you should ever read my words, remember that there are people out there who don’t mind tough 5-mans. Don’t make me mourn TBC heroics forever and ever.

Furthermore, Toravon will be added to Vault of Archavon and Friends, meaning another opportunity to receive T10 gear without spending hard-earned frost emblems. This means I will have to try to run that every week now, rar.

Oh, and some dude called Lich King will be available as final encounter of Icecrown Citadel. Or so I have heard.

What are your thoughts on the new mini-patch?

Now, this first ICC-10 raid was a really different raid for me. It was the first raid I wasn’t going in as progression raid leader and main tank. I recently stepped down as guild officer, after 3.5 years. There were many contributing factors. First, I have no tact. I don’t know if this is a German trait or just me, so I fail at anything that in any form requires tact. When I think someone sucks, I will not sugarcoat it. I won’t be insulting, but I won’t pat on the head either. I will offer advice, but I won’t coddle. As I have posted many times, my guild is all girls. We have little to no drama, but we have a repeating pattern. Girls who have been in the guild for months will leave with absolutely no warning to officers. I don’t know if this is common in other guilds, but it really just happened time and again. Bam, leaving, and mentioning in their apps to other guilds that they did not like something or another about us. The lack of constructive criticism towards the most approachable group of people I have ever met anywhere is baffling. I drew my own conclusion from this: people fear the bad cop, people dislike talking to the blunt, most vocal officer. One of my (many) character flaws is that when I feel pressured and pushed, I will push back and block. But you know what? I was one of 7-8 active officers we had at the time. Even with personal beef against me, there were other nicer, kinder, more gentle people available to talk to, even if it was to complain about me. Never happened. So I bowed out, because I love my guild, and I don’t want to be that officer.

Not being an officer felt like a weight is off my shoulders. I still schedule raids and lead them in off-weeks, but more for my personal pleasure and not with a look at the big picture anymore. On my personal raid to-do list I want to do a Sartharion zerg, because Kadomi of the Nightfall sounds sexy, and possibly Ulduar hardmodes, which should likely be ezmode, but I still want to do them. For fun. After all, WoW is for fun! I am also raid assist for our current raid leader, trying to help her out in any form. We’re a good team, so I think we’ll do fantastically well.

I also did not go in as MT, as I mentioned. In fact, our first night in, I was healing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know most of you come here to read about tanking. But in all honesty I currently do not feel good about the state of the protection warrior in WotLK. I have tried to avoid making whine posts, but I think most protection warrior bloggers like Tarsus, Linedan and even Veneretio will probably agree with me that currently, we get the shaft. Icecrown Citadel, or maybe progression content in its current form is not made for warrior tanking. Our utility and toolkit is supposed to be the buffer for our traditionally low DPS output compared to all other tanks, but that’s not enough for me anymore. Speaking of the toolkit, how awesome will Warbringer be for us when it no longer breaks snares? Thanks, PvP, I love that nerf. Same with Shield Slam damage. Now, there is a sustained damage buff in the air, and it’s likely going to be Devastate getting another buff. This means we go back to Devastate spamming. Big toolkit. Yay.

Yesterday, I was offtank on our second day in Icecrown Citadel. Never have I felt more useless as a tank than in the Plagueworks. Our current MT is a Death Knight. She’s excellent, I adore her, and she does a great job. She could have solo-tanked most of the trash, I suppose. All those AoE pulls where I hopeless spammed Thunderclap and Cleave til I was out of rage and basically only my current target was on me, everything else on the DK. Or on Precious, with all her zombies, where the same situation occurred that she was doing all the AoE tanking and all I could do was taunt Precious off at the right time. And let’s not speak of Festergut. Dead, dead, dead. Here I was, feeling helpless in battle stance, keeping sunders up, keeping Rend up, keeping debuffs up, pretending I was able to make any DPS contribution. I am not able to say that warriors do not have issues. We do. Please fix us, Blizzard. I’ll be on my ‘main alt’ in the meantime, my shaman.

Enough with the whining. Let’s hear some good stuff!

First off, our raid group is awesome. I can’t say that often enough. They bring it. On Saturday, our first ever visit, we went in and one-shot Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper and Gunship Battle. I had a blast healing, and got rewarded for my efforts, with the very sweet Midnight Sun.

Deathbringer Saurfang turned out to be our stumbling block for the night, after an 8% wipe. As we 2-healed this, I felt this was our first real healing challenge, holy crap. Healing a clothie with a Mark is really intense. Our two Blood Beast kiters got some good practice in, and we went back yesterday afternoon. That time I was tanking, not healing, and it was a very amazing one-shot. It was a beauty to behold. Our kiters did a fabulous job, Blood Beasts went down smoothly, our tank transitions were very well timed, and we got our first Mark at about 30%, much later than the day before. I love learning encounters and then kicking their ass.

We moved on to Plagueworks and banged our heads against Festergut for the rest of the day. All in all, I think our raid DPS just isn’t there yet. We need every DPSer to break 4k or it just won’t happen, not in such a tightly tuned encounter. But we did not have everyone break 4k, and those who did weren’t so far above that they compensated for the rest. We cannot carry. I hope that will be in every raider’s head for next time. We cannot carry any DPS. It’s A-game or we will only bring home a huge repair bill. I keep hearing the argument that tank DPS doesn’t decide an encounter, but 100, 200, 500 DPS, it still might mean you beat that enrage timer. I think next time we might have more success with a more execution based encounter as Rotface while we try to solve our DPS problems.

I really did enjoy what I have seen so far, despite my personal disappointment with my own tanking capabilities there. Trash mobs! Traps on the ground to watch for! Rep for killing mobs! You have no idea how excited people were when they got to buy their rings, just like in the good ol’ days of Karazhan raids. Unfortunately I am sitting at 50% rep towards friendly on both my characters now. Next time! The encounters in Lower Spire were all good fun, and especially Gunship Battle made people happy. The Plagueworks immediately set the bar with a lot higher difficulty, starting with the Vrykul trash pulls. It will feel amazing to clear it.

As an aside, I should note that my 24″ monitor I got for Christmas still makes me so freaking happy, and I am in love with my raid UI. Witness my screenshot of the Saurfang kill. Now only try to ignore the stupid quest tracker on the right. Really need to find a way to disable it in raids. I need to write another addon spotlight, to sing the praises for DXE. Deus Vox Encounters is fantastic, I love it, I fully endorse it. Must post about it soon.