• 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.

Making the Best of the Bad

As a PvEer, it’s never fun to see your class getting mucked with due to PvP reasons, but that’s the cards we were dealt this patch. There’s no point in complaining about it, but it is important to understand how the changes have impacted the proper way for us to play in PvE.

The Concussion Blow nerf means that we can forget about using it anymore for any reason other than to stun something which will come as a relief to many that just ignored using it in their rotation anyway or disliked the complexity of our threat system in general.

Devastate received yet another buff which has had an interesting cascade effect. Revenge really just doesn’t keep up anymore which means that we’ve been gifted 2 free talent points in any spec that featured Improved Revenge. I mean sure, Revenge will still be useful in the rare situation that you’re rage starved, but that’s about it. Now are we at the point where slow weapons finally rein supreme? Nope, Heroic Strike spam still trumps all. (although, you’ll definitely want something nice and slow for Festergut when not tanking)

It’s been a sorry expansion for Shield Slam, once the most beloved Prot Warrior skill capable of putting out numbers that nearly had mages jealous. Now we’re left with the pure business bare bones. Is it super fun still? Not really. Will it still do the job? Absolutely. Keep using it and try avoid whining too much to your guild mates about what’s gone.

Warbringer, oh Warbringer… I can’t help, but wonder what changed so much to make this skill so powerful between the beginning of WotLK and now. (of course, it was gear) As far as raiding goes, the impact of this change will be minimal with really only the Faction Champions fight making you take notice. There are more than a few 5 mans though where it’ll take some getting used to before you realize that hammering the Charge key will not get you out of the snare you’re in.

The Big Picture: Simplicity

A threat system that once featured 5 skills now only features 3. Certainly a nice change for newer players. Better yet, accidentally Devastating instead of Shield Slamming will make less of a difference. Furthermore, if you’re caught using a slow weapon, it’s going to hurt you a lot less than it once did.

So, despite a small list of changes, this patch has some pretty big implications. It’s a pretty huge step towards making the Warrior class much friendlier towards newer players. I know a lot of you are going to hate that. I won’t deny that despite advocating changes to simplify how our class was played that I always took pride in the fact that I was playing probably the hardest tanking class in the game. I’m just not sure that’s the case anymore, but frankly, I don’t think it matters. Muscle memory makes it all easy in the end anyway.

The Big Question: DPS

Did the Devastate give us a massive DPS buff? Nope, not even close. Sorry, gang, this buff is in the low hundreds of additional dps not in the thousand range like you’d be hoping and praying for.

Where do we go from here?

Odd question. Why should where we are going change? You can’t complain both about content being too easy and about your class needing buffs. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still playing a fantastically, fun tanking class. I’m heading for the Lich King to steal myself the most exciting item I’ve seen in a long, long time. How ’bout you?

Gloves Breakdown

(Old) Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards
1579 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

(New) Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards
2461 Armor
+81 Strength
+148 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 71.
Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Change
+882 Armor
- 63 Dodge rating

Gauntlets of the Kraken
2658 Armor
+120 Strength
+157 Stamina
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 63.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 48.

Tier gloves vs Emblem gloves
+8 Defense rating
+54 Hit rating

-197 Armor
-39 Strength
-9 Stamina
-48 Parry rating
-Red Socket

Glove Thoughts
A 13 point item level difference means that the Tier gloves have a lot of ground to make up to be considered better. Kraken’s wasted itemization in Strength hurts it, but having a Stamina edge with an extra socket definitely slants things significantly in the Emblem piece’s favour. The avoidance advantage offered by the Kraken gloves swings things even further in it’s favour. The tier piece’s Hit advantage is nice from a threat standpoint, but hardly worth cheering over.

Ultimately, Gauntlets of the Kraken are still far superior to the Tier10 gloves and are likely to remain better survival-wise even once you have the item level 264 versions of the Tier10 gloves. The big question you’ll have to ask yourself is whether or not you want more survival or more threat and how much the set bonuses mean to you. On a fight that has a point where the more defensive cooldowns the better, the Tier gloves certainly become the better choice since they’ll allow you to get the 4 piece bonus without using the grossly inferior Tier10 legs.

Chest Breakdown

(Old) Ymirjar Lord’s Breastplate
2526 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 76.
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 68.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 68.

(New) Ymirjar Lord’s Breastplate
3590 Armor
+144 Strength
+191 Stamina
Red Socket
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Stamina
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 60.
Equip: Increases your parry rating by 76.

Change
+1064 Armor
+8 Parry rating
-8 Dodge rating
- 76 Defense rating

Cataclysmic Chestguard
3817 Armor
+123 Strength
+207 Stamina
Yellow Socket
Blue Socket
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +12 Stamina
Equip: Increases defense rating by 108.
Equip: Increases your expertise rating by 82.

Tier chest vs Emblem chest
+21 Strength
+60 Dodge rating
+76 Parry rating

-227 Armor
-16 Stamina
-108 Defese rating
-82 Expertise rating
-Yellow Socket

Chest Thoughts
The Emblem chest offers a lot of everything we’d rather have. It’s way better threat-wise and pretty similar survival-wise with the benefit of being survival oriented towards Effective Health rather than Avoidance. The Tier chest sadly is itemized more towards Strength which is always a bad thing. I think it’s safe to say the item level 264 Tier chest will have similar Armor and Stamina levels. If we’re lucky, it’ll gain a socket too. It’ll definitely be worth using the 264 Tier chest when going for the 4 piece set bonus, but I think that’s about the only time you’ll want to use it.

There’s a very real concern though regarding the massive Defense difference. The crafted legs and boots already have no Defense on them. This could mean that in order for 10 man raiders to complete the 4 piece bonus that they’ll have to drop the crafted boots. This really starts to muddy the waters since that means 10 man raiders will have to use 3 pieces that are 13 levels lower item level wise (boots, chest, gloves) in order to complete the 4 piece set bonus. It becomes questionable at this point whether it’s even worth using the 4 piece bonus.

Overall Thoughts

I still really like this change. I think it’ll be a really positive change for 25 man raiders allowing them to actually justify the use of their 4 piece Tier 10 set bonus. Even though eventually, I think you’ll use the upgraded Tier chest on everything challenging you face, it’s definitely the last piece you’ll want to pick up and really only once you can upgrade it immediately. So, I’d still pick up the Emblem chest first since you’ll use it for any fight that requires more threat/dps or really any fight that doesn’t warrant the 4 piece bonus. The Tier gloves are the more exciting change as you’ll be happy to use them even before having a chance to upgrade them. Having them will allow you to complete your 2 piece bonus while using a helm you’ve picked up out of ICC25.

10 man raiders are pretty unaffected by this change. I just don’t think you want to even consider wearing the Tier chest. It’s less appealing threat and survival wise not to mention completely devoid of Defense rating. The 251 Tier gloves may be a bit enticing now especially to those of you that love Hit rating, but I still think it’s not worth it.

Remember too that with the new patch comes a new PvP boss. Notoriously, these bosses have always dropped the legs and gloves. The legs should not excite you and you really shouldn’t be using them unless you haven’t got around to crafting the amazing Pillars of Might yet. Certainly don’t think that you can just skip the crafted legs because you managed to grab the Tier legs. The gloves are really what you’re crossing your fingers for especially 10 man folk since you’ll be able to sneak into 25 man pugs of the place for a shot at the better pair. 25 man raiders are likely still better off just outright buying the Tier gloves since once upgraded they should prove to be an excellent piece and an easy way to always have the 2 piece bonus.

So, in the end, a nice change, but those of you that already picked up some of the Emblem rewards shouldn’t be too beaten up about it. Both Emblem pieces are still really solid.

We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they’re provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. This will apply to all item levels of the tier-10 death knight, warrior, and paladin tanking gloves and chest pieces.

Similar items crafted or purchased with Emblems of Frost will continue to be very good and will compare favorably to all but the Heroic difficulty boss loot, so you shouldn’t despair if you recently acquired any of those. (source)

So, while we don’t know the buffs yet, what we do know is that the Tier 10 chest and gloves will probably be pretty comparable when upgraded to that of Cataclysmic Chestguard and Gauntlets of the Kraken. Which is why I recommend just not picking up either of these pieces for the time being if you can upgrade their Tier 10 counterparts. It’s very likely that when this change becomes a reality that you’ll skip getting the Emblem chest and gloves altogether.

What about 10 man folk!?

I wouldn’t change a thing and still stick to the Emblem pick order. The Tier 10 chest and gloves when not upgraded will still be significantly lower item level and as such, you’re better off going with the non-set components. Now true, come hard modes, you’ll be able to upgrade your Tier 10, but that’s still too far off to warrant skipping 2 massive non-set upgrades.

Thoughts on the Change

Excellent.

This basically makes it much easier to use our Tier 10 4-piece bonus even from a 10 man standpoint. Best of all, the 25 man Hard Mode Tier loot will be a no-brainer over the Emblem pieces now which is the way it should be.

The Need for Speed

Whether or not you should have to pull fast is a topic for another day. What we’ll look at today is how to pull fast. What makes those of us that can pull at a fast pace able to and what we’re doing different to stay comfortable while completing instances at pug friendly paces.

1. Don’t Loot
Perhaps the least obvious thing to do, stopping clicking on the sparklies is one of the easiest ways to speed up your runs significantly. At the end of a run, all you’ll be missing out on is some gray items to sell since your party members will ensure any items or gold gets looted. The time you save is probably worth more in the long run than the gray items were worth anyway.

2. Don’t wait for mana
Healers need a bit of mana. DPSers need none with bosses being the exception where you should wait a bit. You should always try to take a peak at your healers mana after every other pull, but make sure you’re moving while doing this. If the healer had to rez someone then you’ll likely have to pause for a second. Using abilities like Shield Block, Shockwave and Shield Wall constantly can ensure that you’ll take a lot less damage and keep your healers mana high always.

3. Don’t be texting people
You’re in a run or you’re typing. Not both. You’re a tank. You don’t have time for that. If someone needs to ask you something, they’re more than welcome to jump on Ventrilo and ask. If they don’t have your Ventrilo access then you probably don’t want to talk to them anyway. If you thought that this was about playing while texting on your phone then please just delete your tank right now.

4. Learn to tank and talk
A continuation of the above. You should expect to have to talk and tank at the same time so make sure whatever keybinding you have setup for talking doesn’t limit your ability to tank in any way.

5. Look ahead
When the mobs are low on health, it’s time to start scouting out what you’ll be pulling next. You don’t need to apply threat to anything with 20% health left since even if a DPSer pulls aggro, it’ll be dead before it does them any significant damage.

6. Don’t wait for combat to end
Not only should you be looking ahead when the mobs are nearly dead, but also already getting in position for the next pull. Whether you pull the next group immediately or not really has nothing to do with waiting to get out of combat and instead whether or not pulling it will keep you in range of your healer. If you have to run down 3 flights of stairs for the next group then there’s no point in grabbing them. If they’re in line of sight, go ahead and do it right away. The obvious exception being, if your healer is completely out of mana, if someone is dead or if the next pull is a boss.

7. Stop Tabbing
Target selection can make or break the speed of your run. If you’re trying to tab through everything to get to the new stuff you want to pull then you’re going to end up wasting valuable time. One click of the mouse should grab you exactly the target you want and ensure the pace of your run remains high.

8. Charge
Whenever possible, charge to pull. It’ll not only give you extra rage, but also get you there faster. This gives you more time to generate threat and the sooner you hit the threat threshold to which you can’t be passed by a DPSer… the sooner you can grab the next group.

9. Pull extra close groups
Simply put, if it’s close enough for someone to accidentally aggro it (or intentionally aggro it…) then it’s close enough to be pulled with whatever else you’re pulling. If it’s a group of 3 or a really ugly group of 2 then use your defensive cooldowns.

10. Don’t Wipe
Yes, it’s obvious, but always remember that if you wipe even a single time then all of the corners you cut to speed up your run have been for nothing. Sometimes, the fastest way to tank an instance is going to be sitting and waiting.

11. Wipe
You’ll never know what corners you can cut until they kill you. Part of what has made the fast pulling tanks so fast is that they’ve killed themselves over and over again pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Forget about your health and just keep pulling. Don’t watch the mini-map and just assume they’re behind you. Don’t ask where to go and just make the call yourself.

Get comfortable with “too fast”

Pulling fast isn’t just about completing 5 mans as fast as possible. It’s an important skill for raiding. Many raid encounters include things like gauntlets or waves of adds. The more comfortable you are at quickly picking up group after group of adds… the easier these types of raid encounters are going to be for you.

So, should you have to pull fast? I don’t know.
Is it worth learning to? Absolutely.

Heroics

Red Sword of Courage
Upon launch this was the must have weapon that you ran Utgarde Pinnacle for over and over again for and if you’ve just hit 80, it’s still a great first item to pursue.

Axe of the Sen’jin Protector / Teldrassil Protector
Acquired via Champion’s Seals from running Heroic ToC5, this pair of axes offers more of a “sure thing” if you’re unlucky acquiring the superior sword above. It should be noted though for those of you that rollled Orcs that this is the better choice due to it activating your Expertise racial.

Lucky Old Sun
Regular Forge of Soul’s recent addition to the Heroic tanking weapon selection. Nice and fast with excellent itemization. It will serve you well for the short time you’ll use it before acquiring any of the upcoming heroic items.

Peacekeeper Blade
It’s kind of a cardinal rule that if something has an extra socket on the rest of the field, it’s going to be awesome. This blade doesn’t disappoint making it easily the best starter tanking weapon you can acquire out of the easier heroics. [Heroic ToC5]

Falric’s Wrist-Chopper
A welcomed addition to the tanking weapon selection if you’re an Orc. (even better than the blade above for us green folk) It’s not really worth pursuing otherwise. (which should come as a relief to those of you not wanting to brave Heroic Halls of Reflection any time soon)

Rimefang’s Claw
The last weapon you’ll ever need from Heroics. Hopefully you won’t have to farm Heroic Pit of Saron too long for it. So well itemized that it trumps many of the weapons that come from raids. (as you’ll see me indicate later with references to “The Claw”)

Naxx

Slayer of the Lifeless
Similar to the Red Sword of Courage and ultimately, better due to it’s slightly faster attack speed. Your time is far better spent though farming “The Claw”. [Gothik10]

Broken Promise
For it’s time it was a horrible threat weapon, (all slow weapons are) but a beautiful survival-based one. The addition of “The Claw” renders this one obsolete. [4Horsemen25]

Last Laugh
At one point, this was the golden standard of tanking awesomeness when you wanted to show off the cool loot you’d acquired around the tanking watercooler. These days, it’s worse than “The Claw” and isn’t even the best Orc weapon left with Falcric’s taking it’s place. [Kel’Thuzad25]

Ulduar

Stoneguard
Exactly what a tank doesn’t need when acquiring early loot… a weapon without defense. Garbage. Peacekeeper’s Blade, Falric’s, “The Claw”, you named it… all render this “never was” even more obsolete than previously. [Kologarn10]

Legacy of Thunder
Really similar to Lucky Old Sun, just way harder to acquire. The days of tanks using this giant lollipop have long past. [Thorim10]

Titanguard
Another relic of the past content patches that we were really, really excited about seeing that we really, really don’t care too much about anymore. The big 3 from Heroics all are better or close enough to this one to make you better off just skipping pursuing it.

Shiver
These days Shiver is the first raid worth weapon to trouble yourself with acquiring over the current Heroic crop. You’ll need to down Hodir10 on Hard mode to do it which isn’t always the easiest feat, but is certainly significantly less challenging than it once was thanks to the accessibility of superior gear.

Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers
Easily trumps everything before it on the list. Now you’ve just got to convince your guild to kill XT25 on Hard mode over and over again until it drops. (or you could just work on acquiring the following…)

Onyxia

Barely worth mentioning, the Quels are horribly itemized and you’re better off picking up one of the Big 3 Heroic weapons instead of either of them.

ToC

Ardent Guard / Crusader’s Glory
It’s no secret that I love bonus Armor so it should come as no surprise that I love these items. A nudge worse than Sorthalis, but certainly far superior to everything else before them on the list. [Anub10]

Blood and Glory / Honor of the Fallen
The first step beyond Sorthalis, B&G / HotF will require you to down Anub10 on Hard mode with 25 attempts left on your chest. I suppose one could be excited about getting one of these, but you’d be better off instead having one these drop…

Ardent Guard [H] / Crusader’s Glory [H]
The weapon you want to walk into and ultimately finish regular 10 and/or 25 man Icecrown with. They’re simply that good. Have fun farming Anub10 Hard mode for them over and over again on your ICC off days!

Orgrim’s Deflector / Silverwing Defender
Downing Anub25 on Hard mode is an impressive accomplishment. I wouldn’t say these rewards reflect the tremendous effort required though. Similar, perhaps better, perhaps worse than Ardent Guard [H] so if you’ve already got the 10 man blade, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over not getting your hands on one of these.

Enchanting them…

The inevitable question that never goes away that I should have weighed in on long ago. It’s always been about Blood Draining or Mongoose. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I look through the research on the numbers, those are the winners. Mongoose is the best overall enchant. Blood Draining is the best effective health enchant. What you use is really up to you. I prefer the latter, but certainly won’t dismiss the former and may very well be caught using Mongoose if my gut leans that way again.

What about ICC!?

Ya, I probably shouldn’t make you wait on those picks…

Putricide10’s Facelifter gets a slight edge over Marrowgar10’s Bonebreaker Scepter. These 10 man weapons will be a welcomed upgrade to anyone not using something from Heroic ToC10/25. Their Heroic versions are about the same as the Heroic ToC10/25 loot so I wouldn’t get too excited about them from a survival standpoint. The upgraded versions do represent a significant dps/threat increase though which is always nice.

Finally, Putricide25’s Last Word should be renamed Last Place since that’s about where it sits even relative to the weaker Heroic loot.

Wrap Up

The 2 most important pieces of loot I’ve talked about here are “The Claw” and Ardent Guard [H] / Crusader’s Glory [H]. The former is the best tanking weapon you’ll acquire from Heroics and is significantly better than most raid loot. The latter represents the best, accessible tanking weapon you can wield when walking into Icecrown. I hope you guys have better luck looking for them than I have!

A bit. Not a lot.

What you give up for Bonus Armor

I’ve been raving about Bonus Armor and the often counter argument is it does nothing against magic damage.

Which is true.

However, what does Avoidance do against magic damage? What does Expertise and Hit rating do? How about Block?

Nothing.

Which is what you give up to get Bonus Armor.

You give up Nothing to get Bonus Armor

So, don’t kid yourself. There really is no reason not to pick up all those fancy high armor pieces. Ultimately, even the magic heavy fights like Festergut and Rotface have an angry boss swinging at you with physical attacks. Utilizing Bonus Armor is stating, I’d rather take less damage than get hit less often. I’d rather increase my chances of surviving a melee swing that lands plus a magical attack combination.

Armor is always useful because you never die to just magic damage. (and if you do, something has clearly gone terribly wrong)

Okay, I’m half sold… what about trinkets?

You got me. Trinkets are a whole new ballgame. If we want Bonus Armor in the trinket slot, we’ll have to give up Stamina. This suddenly isn’t such a sexy trade-off. Which means that we’ll be using 2 Stamina trinkets for these encounters, right?

Wrong.

We absolutely will for Festergut. We won’t for Rotface. The Rotface encounter really doesn’t do the Main tank that much magic damage. It always pays to know the encounter ahead of time. That’s why I linked the research for you at the start of this post.

Finally, I can’t emphasize enough, that even in the most magical intensive of fights, you’ll die not to a magical attack, but to the combination of a melee swing landing in conjunction with a magical attack. So, a straight Stamina trinket isn’t necessarily better than one with a really strong usage. In fact, you’ll find I always prefer the latter.

Read up. Ready up. And best of luck!

Skip: Ymirjar Lord’s Legguards [95]

Yes, I snuck the crafted pieces that require Primordial Saronite (23 Emblems of Frost each) in there this time. I’m not taking into account that the patterns themselves require a Primordial Saronite to buy though which you may or may not have to do as well.

Wait… I’m getting the Tier pieces last!?

Yes, they are lower item level than the other emblem pieces.

What if I’ve got a token to upgrade them?

Still take them last.

You’re going to have to start explaining

Fair enough

Bonus Armor is amazing and it’s on everything. There really is a 4 way tie between the first 4 picks on the list. You’ll want to pick them up in that order if all of those slots have the same item level of gear for you. If they don’t, take the biggest upgrade. Just make sure you get those 4 first. Bonus Armor is just that good.

But, aren’t the set bonuses amazing!?

They are good, but when it comes down to raw survival they aren’t as good as Bonus Armor. Certainly there are going to be fights where the 4 piece set bonus is worth it and that’s why eventually we’ll pick it up, but for the time being while we’re working on regular modes in Icecrown, we’re going to just go with plain, old survival.

The 2 piece set bonus is another story as you can tell from the list as we’ll be picking up the 2 parts to it a lot earlier. With DPSers getting better and better gear at every moment, we certainly could use the extra punch offered by the 2 piece bonus especially since we’ll be sacrificing a lot of our threat stats for more Bonus Armor. (That said, if a fight requires a lot of threat, don’t rigidly stick with all your Bonus Armor stuff. Gear for the fight as always.)

Fine, I guess I buy that… but the trinket!?

Well… I need more in a Trinket than Stamina. So, this trinket comes off as really, really lackluster to me. Absorbing damage isn’t exciting at all. Compare the bonus offered by this trinket to Satrina’s Impeding Scarab and it’s clear that the emblem trinket got the shaft. And I’m not just saying this when comparing the trinket to high tier items, I wouldn’t use this Stamina beast over The Black Heart either. So between the two I’ve already mentioned that best it, Glyph of Indomitability which is still amazing, there’s also Heart of Iron and Royal Seal of King Llane.

Which really begs the question, why pick it up at all? Because you never know if the absorb mechanic will be useful for some fight. It’s also entirely possible that a fight will have only magic damage and it’d be nice to have this in our toolkit. Okay, who am I kidding… sometimes, you just want to show off how much health you can get!

Lord Marrowgar

Marrowgar is a mix of a few fights of old and nothing too terribly challenging to tank, but very costly to your raid if you slip up. You’ll need to be stacked up with another tank during the first phase otherwise you’ll die quickly. Since his whirlwind (phase 2) wipes aggro when it ends, your best bet is to have you and the other tank with you always go to opposite sides of the room when the whirlwind starts. To spell it out, I went left and the other tank went right. It really pays to have a timer telling you when the whirlwind will end so that you don’t waste any threat.

p.s. He’s immune to Taunt. He’s now Tauntable.

Relevant Loot

• Bonebreaker Scepter
• Marrowgar’s Scratching Choker

Lady Deathwhisper

Another fight that’ll have TBC raiders feeling all nostalgic. You’ll be picking up adds in phase 1 while she pelts your raid with shadow bolts. She has no aggro at this time so trying to generate threat on her is pointless. The melee adds cleave so keep them faced away from melee. If one of the melee mobs turns into a mutant, don’t be afraid to use a cooldown. (at the very least, use Shield Block) They hit really hard and this is the only time during the fight that I ever felt the least bit threatened.

p.s. Standing in green stuff is bad.

In phase 2, you’ll have to swap back and forth with the other tank since you’ll get a debuff that reduces how much threat you can generate. Her frost bolts should be interrupted, but at the same time, I didn’t find the few that got through did very much at all on 10 man.

Relevant Loot

• Ghoul Commander’s Cuirass

The Gunship Battle

If you take the boring job of staying on the friendly ship, you’ll pick up a set of 3 adds over and over again. Save Shockwave and Concussion Blow for the big guys. Avoid getting shot by cannons. While I didn’t, I suspect this fight could be done with a single tank. If you’re doing the fun tanking job, you’ll be jumping over to the other ship and offtanking a guy that hits like a bus. Always make sure you’re the first one over and the last one off the enemy ship otherwise your teammates will find themselves dead in a single shot.

p.s. Offtanking the big dude on the enemy ship near the edge allows you to get healed from the friendly side and makes escaping quick when it’s time to leave.

Relevant Loot

• Abomination’s Bloody Ring
• Neverending Winter

Deathbringer Saurfang

I really love this fight since I feel Warriors really shine on it. When he hits 30%, he’s going to do a lot more damage so it’s best to save your cooldowns for situations during this time when another raider has both the mark and boiling blood and thus requires the healer’s attention. You should never be tanking him if you have the Rune of Blood debuff.

p.s. Tank him where he stands facing sideways so it’s obvious which add the DPSers should kill first.

The adds are where Warriors offer, a lot. Piercing Howl (5/11/55) is amazing for them and will allow DPSers to focus more on dpsing. (Big thanks to my tank partner for having it!) Shockwave is amazing for them. Concussion Blow is amazing for them. Intercept and Charge are amazing for them. Get the idea? You are amazing for them. You can Shockwave the far add immediately since Shockwave will do 95% less damage, (healers will generate plenty of threat) but only use Concussion Blow if the adds are at around 50% health since it will do full damage and threat. (You don’t want aggro) If you aren’t tanking Saurfang at the time, Intercept and Charge both can be used to buy your ranged a few more seconds.

Relevant Loot

• Deathforged Legplates
• Gargoyle Spit Bracers

Thoughts

An excellent raid experience so far. Healers and DPSers are probably tested more than us tanks. We 3 healed it so our healers probably had an easier time than they will next week when I try 2 healing a lot of the fights. The trash was exciting and filled with surprises especially since we apparently have a blind rogue. As a whole, the first 3 bosses are probably a bit more challenging than the first 4 in ToC, but less challenging than when we first walked into Ulduar. (granted, Ulduar has been nerfed significantly since)

My whole team walking in with full 25 man gear certainly meant that we had an easier time than a dedicated 10 man is going to have (although no bloodlust so probably similar dps levels to a 10s team), but even an exclusive 10 man team that’s properly geared and experienced should expect to see Saurfang this week.

Saurfang is exactly the type of difficulty that I’d like to see all regular content. He rewards a nice, mixed group composition. His enrage timer is forgiving enough that groups shouldn’t hit it if everyone lives, but challenging enough that a single death to his mark is probably a wipe. And most importantly, his adds allow for a number of different, creative solutions. Here’s hoping that the rest of Icecrown is equally and more challenging.

Huh? How do you interview a trinket? Well, I hope that’s not what you’re thinking right now, but if you are, you’ll find this interview especially enlightening. I have the pleasure of presenting you my interview with Satrina of the Evil Empire Guides, Satrina Buff Frames and much more!

1. How did you get started with theorycrafting?

Back in 2004 I started to wonder about these “crushing blows” that I kept seeing in the combat log. The tooltip said that defense was supposed to reduce the chance of crushing blows happening, and I was curious as to how that worked. I went out and collected and bought a ton of gear with defense on it and then spent a great deal of time dying to Taelan Fordring. After collecting a few thousand data points, I posted a bug report showing my findings which absolutely showed that defense was not reducing the chance of crushing blows. The report was answered by the Blizzard employee Block who explained the basics of how defense and crushing blows interacted for us. With that knowledge in hand, I wrote my first two articles: defense and crushing blows. The rest is history!

2. Why did you write all of those articles, anyway?

Funnily enough, because I am lazy. I got tired of writing out the same response over and over again, and pasting a link is much easier. Having something in a permanent place makes it a lot easier to refine, reword, and update things so that people always have the most up to date information available when they visit, rather than having eleventy different versions floating around in various threads. Now that everything is at TankSpot, it’s viable to have discussion and let people put their questions in a relevant context as well.

3. Anything you regret writing?

Yep. In 2004: “It seems that there may always be a small chance that you’ll get a critical hit no matter how high your defense is”. I’ve regretted that line for years. At the time, we simply were not 100% sure how crit reduction from defense worked. Most theory people figured that some mobs just had a higher crit chance, but I didn’t want to come across as if I knew absolutely. We know better now, of course. With a little more thought before calling it done, I could have included the part where we infer that some mobs just have higher crit chance since if there was always a small chance to be crit regardless, we’d see many more critical hits every day across more than 100 servers, yadda, yadda. 20/20 hindsight and all that.

4. Can you recall the moment you first thought, “Hey, I’m E-Famous”?

There are really two points that come to mind. The first was around late 2005 when I first noticed that a lot of questions were being answered on the WoW forums simply by linking to my stuff at evilempireguild.org. About the same time, the Satrina email address started to pick up with people asking questions and looking for advice. The second was when I started getting more and more email about SBF, started to see people asking for SBF help on the WoW UI forum, and more and more people had SBF in their posts in the ever-present “show your UI” threads on various forums. The latter is much more recent, mostly in the past 12 months.

5. How does it feel to be “E-Famous”?

Equal parts flattered, ridiculous, and nerdy. It’s a funny thing.

6. How did that feeling compare to seeing your name on an item?

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grinning for a few days. And calling myself a dreadful nerd. This was a pretty awesome moment, too:

7. What do you think it was that caught Blizzard’s eye enough in order for you to be honored in such a way?

If I had to guess, I would imagine it’s because of the way that I have been active in the tanking community. Probably that and the fact that I’ve been mouthing off for just about five years now on that and other aspects of the game! Seriously, though, I think that part of the recognition comes from my attempts to only talk about things that are seemingly immediately relevant without (very much) hyberbole and exaggeration. Backing what I am trying to say with math or at least reasoned arguments. I’ve tried very hard to not let my natural sarcasm colour my writings, and to not flame people - I have been mostly successful with that, which I think helped too. Also, contrary to what my detractors might say, I have always given as much of an even hand towards the other tanking classes as my knowledge allows when I do bring things up. I’m not sure if what I’ve done in terms of addons was part of the mix or not.

8. What do you feel has been your most important contribution to the community?

I’d like to think that it’s the guides that I wrote and continue to maintain and keep up to date. My intent was to take subjects that can be pretty complex and try to break them down into explanations that anyone can understand. I haven’t always been successful at the first cut, but I do continually edit and refine to make things that much more clear and easy to read. Given the views they still get even more than four years later in some case, I think I have been successful overall. As they saying goes, as long as someone is getting benefit from it, it’s all worth it.

9. What do you get more feedback from, your articles or your addons?

At this point, addons hands down. I get a PM on TankSpot every once in a while, and maybe two or three email per week asking about game mechanics. I handle upwards of 25 email in a week about SBF in the normal course of things, and at least double that when SBF is in a beta phase. I have a pretty devoted following of people who I can count on to test SBF betas and provide awesome feedback and error reports (thanks gang!)

10. How did you get started in addons?

My very first addon project was to write new unit frames that had no status bars anywhere. I hate them because they give me no useful information. Eventually, people started asking what unit frames I was using in my screenshots and I packaged them up as Satrina Unit Frames. That’s probably my least popular addon, but I’m not the only one who hates status bars! The second one I wrote was a little addon to move the buff and debuff frames off to the side, arrange them in vertical columns, and make the icons smaller. People started asking about that one, too, so Satrina Buff Frames got packaged up and made available. For a long time, I told people that they were strictly “what you get is what you get”, but I finally gave in and started adding sliders and checkboxes in an options frame. Again, the rest is history!

11. What would you suggest aspiring addon creators do to get in the “game”?

Start small. If you don’t know XML, learn the basics. If you already are a programmer, Lua will be a snap to learn. If you aren’t, Lua is a very easy language to learn. Wowwiki is an excellent resource for learning what’s made available to your addons by the game client to let you figure out what is possible and what is not, so reading up on that is a very good idea. There is an excellent book out there (http://wowprogramming.com) written by three prominent members of the UI community that will give a great head start to any aspiring authors whether they are have programming experience or not. Most importantly, find a few little addons to study and see how they work, and how things interact with the game client. The best way to learn it is to play with it and break it.

12. Do you enjoy theorycrafting more than WoW itself? If so, was this immediately the case or was there a transition to it?

Yes. If it weren’t for theorycrafting and addons, I would have quit WoW completely a long time ago. In fact, I don’t actively raid anymore at this point and only do theorycrafting and addons. Well, only addons at the moment as SBF is going into development for the next release, and Digits 2 is due to be finished for release in the next few weeks. I am sure that Cataclysm, if not 3.3, will suck me back into testing and theorycrafting in a hurry!

13. Where do you see yourself going with addons and theorycrafting?

Well, not being active raider anymore gives me a lot more time during evenings through the week! I’ve now finalised the feature list for SBF version 3.2, and will be starting design and coding in the coming weeks. First up is to finish off the long-delayed Digits 2, though. I think tanks will be pretty happy with what that will bring. As for theorycrafting, there isn’t a great deal to do now, at least on the warrior side of the house. When 3.3 comes, I’ll re-test all of the threat values for warriors again to make sure everything is current. I keep meaning to rewrite the “Life after 490 Defense” article into a “Life after 540 Defense” article. Maybe I’ll get around to that, though with Cataclysm and the demise of defense on the horizon it isn’t perhaps as high on the list. When Cataclysm comes, I am sure there will be lots to do!

14. If Blizzard offered you a job, would you take it? If so, what role would you ideally play?

It’s quite literally the only thing that would entice me to move to the U.S. Would I take it? As a kid, I always wished I could be the guy who wrote Karateka or Ultima. Working at Blizzard would be the ultimate way to realise that dream. As for role, I’ve a very long history of tearing games apart and trying to make them better, so ideally I’d love to be on the systems team working on game mechanics. I could definitely see myself working on UI development as well - so long as nobody wanted me to do anything with Photoshop!

And that’s a wrap! Big thanks to Satrina for humouring me with an interview and even more so for all that he has contributed to our community over the past 5 years!

1. We don’t

“Who cares. I don’t need the extra threat anyway.”

Even if the threat reduction isn’t required, there are still opportunities to gain extra taunts or at the very worst, provide extra damage reduction to one of our squishier teammates. Stop being lazy.

“Paladin threat is so stupid. I shouldn’t have to use my abilities.”

2. Get a Partner

“I remember half the time and so does the guy I tank with.”

Definitely one of the easiest ways to remember to put up your Vigilance is to tank with another Protection Warrior. In other words, you remind each other. What if you forget to remind the other guy even when you remember? Well, you could use this macro:

/cast Vigilance
/raid Vigilance on %t

Of course, now you’ve gotta learn to watch who they’re Vigilancing because sadly, 2 Vigilances are not better than 1.

“Hey, I called him, first!”

3. Get a Buddy

“Hey, I’m missing my Vigilance!”

Perhaps the most effective way to remember to use Vigilance is to create a relationship with a person that you can frequently Vigilance. When you find the right person, they’ll never let you forget that you haven’t buffed them yet. Of course, the downside is breaking the news to them when you’ve gotta use your Vigilance on someone else.

“It’s not you… it’s me. Well actually, it’s you.”

4. Do it on the Fly

“This stupid macro always rats me out.”

It’s amazing how as soon as you pull the boss you’ll always remember you forgot to use Vigilance. It’s still worth putting it on at this point just remember to get some decent threat first before you use your global cooldown on something that won’t generate a high amount of threat immediately.

Also, always error on the side of giving it to someone you know will be in range. It’s not worth dragging the boss all over the instance in order to get the ideal Vigilance target. You screwed up. You forgot. Just give Vigilance to that annoying rogue.

“Hey, Vene forgot Vigilance, again!”

5. The Old String on the Finger trick

“Uh guys, do you think the string is too tight if my finger is turning purple?”

No, I’m not recommending actually playing with string tied around your finger. Use a Vigilance tracker. Vigilant to be precise.

“This addon is so amazing! So simple. So awesome!”

“Couldn’t you just play with a string tied around your finger?”

“Shut up, annoying rogue.”