Jibou's "Yet another tanking blog"

Raiding Alliance

2008-07-05T13:28:00.004+02:00

At the moment we're in a bit of a vacation period with my guild.

We haven't raided any T6 instances in a long while because we never seem to be getting the healers we need (damn healers!), so we are starting an alliance with another guild, Divine Vengeance. That guild was a very famous one back on Nax days, but now they seem to have completely lost the head-start they used to have.
They are in fact worse geared than us, or in most cases, fully PVP geared, which shows they don't really raid. There used to be a time where they farmed SSC/TK, but when I checked they only had one real tank, so I'm guessing it must've been a long while ago.
Anywho, I'm not a big fan of raiding alliances. In most cases, there's drama and conflict around every corner. We used to have a raiding alliance when we started doing Gruul, but it went so poorly it really didn't last long. Ironically, when we destroyed the alliance we started doing very well on progress, and we went way faster than the other guild (not that it was a competition), which means they were holding us back.
Unfortunately, that's also the case with Divine Vengeance. They have some great guys, but they're really not ready for T6 instances, and even if they were, we would have to relearn all the MH/BT boss encounters to be able to do em with them.
The good thing about this alliance is that it will allow us to at least raid some T5 content, which is better than nothing. But since I already have all I want from T5 instances and I've done them way too many times, I'm thinking of switching main to my shaman for the time being, as I enjoy healing in raids with her. She should do fine for T5 as she has all the gear from Karazhan and Gruul. All I need is T4 chest and a necklace!
Cya later chumps.

How to succeed in MGT

2008-06-19T19:22:00.003+02:00

This is for all those new tanks out there that are worried about MGT.

I am writing this because the first few times I did MGT, it was a complete disaster. We wiped over and over because we had a terrible setup, because I had no idea what I was supposed to do and what was going to happen. So here's to hoping this will help you not sucking as much as I did.

It's one of those rare instances where, unless you trust the gear and skill of your group, you can't bring someone that's not the right class. Let me elaborate.

Why should I care?

You should. Heroic Magister's terrace has an incredibly good tanking trinket and a fantastic (if not the best in game) threat trinket. I'm of course talking about Commendation of Kael'Thas and Shard of contempt (which you shouldn't pass to a rogue).

As a bonus, Kael has some nice DPS gear for a dual wield devastate set and the second boss drops a very nice ring in normal difficulty.

Are those trinkets really that good?

Yes.

Now, setup!

From personal experience, the best setup, or at least the one I prefer, is:

Tank (meself)
Healer (anything but a paladin)
Warlock (to enslave succubus)
Mage (to sheep)
Hunter (to trap)

The hunter I prefer to a second mage because of his very high DPS. Everything with that setup will work it out nicely. The only time we had a slight glitch was with a very odd combination of adds on the third boss. But even then, this setup rocked it.

Now, this doesn't mean that you can't take any other class, but know that the more you change this group the harder it's gonna be for you, because you'll have more things to tank.

How to tank in MGT!

Now, once you've got your group going, here's a few things you should watch out for:

If there is a blood knight in the group, sheep him. He heals others. You can choose to nuke him down right away but I don't recommend it as there are the casters that are more dangerous.
Magisters will spam frostbolt on you. You will take a huge amount of damage if you don't do anything. Spell reflect as much as possible.
The warlocks aren't too dangerous. Remember to tell your hunter to nuke the imp at the start of each pack so that it doesn't bother the healer. You can spell reflect their incinerates too.
The wretched mobs. Try to tank them all, and get the mage to sheep one and the hunter can try trapping one. It's not too hard, just remember to spell reflect every time the cooldown is ready.
IMPORTANT: Second boss is NOT a DPS race. He spawns lightning balls every 25% (I think, or 20%, whatever). If your DPS is too high he will spawn the balls too fast for your healer to keep up. Once you get 2 of them, have your warlock pet and hunter pet pick them up, and let them die. The next two, the mage can take them and iceblock out of the debuff. The 2 next, you can take (or at least one). You can take a decent number of debuff before dying, it just depends on your gear and you healer. Anywho, after the first 6 he should die soon enough. Remember to nuke at 20ish% (sorry I forgot where the exact % of the phases are since I haven't done it in a long time now).
Make sure your warlock enslaves the succubus and make him tank a mob too (usually the magister).
My tipical kill order is Warlock->Magister->Trap->Sheep->Enslave. Try to find one that works out well for you and stick to it.
Third boss, I would either put on high SBV gear or DPS gear, since there's no aggro... except for the hunter mob's pet. It is crucial that, if you get the hunter add, you keep his pet off the healer with a simple good old taunt.
Remember to spell reflect all the fireballs you can on Kael. It's a lot of damage.

Supremus

2008-06-18T15:50:00.006+02:00

Supremus. Now THAT, is what I call a boss. Have you seen the guy? It's freaking fantastic. Big, flaming, spiky, spewing blue volcanoes. What more can you want? Oh that's right! Only one of the best tanking weapons in the game, some great tanking shoulders and an excellent tanking ring!

Seriously! this guy is every tank's dream! He drops not one, not two, but three tanking items, each one of them juicier than the next!

Ironically, he hasn't dropped any of the 3 yet. Oh well.

Have fun fighting for the first time, you wont have many other bosses this cool.

Belkin - Tanking

2008-06-18T15:31:00.003+02:00

Now, I have always been a clicker. I was clicking most abilities except shield slam and devastate, and even those I was often clicking them.

I thought I'd never learn to stop clicking, because it's the kind of thing I just can't do. I play guitar and am left handed, but for some reason my left hand completely lacks coordination when it comes to using it on the keyboard.

So I got myself the new Belkin - n52te, and I'm here to let you know how great it is. Sure it has a couple of defects, like the space button that sometimes gets stuck... and that's about it!

So, very simply, here's my settup:

(for those who don't know, the pad keys start from the top left, that's n°1, and then the one to its' right is n°2...)

First line

1 : Bloodrage

2 : Heroic strike

3 : W

4 : Demo shout

5 : Thunder clap

Second line

6 : Shield block

7 : A

8 : S

9 : D

10 : Shield slam

Third line

11 : Devastate

12 : pending

13 : Commanding shout

14 : Revenge

15 : Jump :)

Circle button : Ventrilo push to talk

Wheel click : Reverse camera. It's actually a really useless feature that I learnt from either Veneretio or Ciderhelm I can't remember. Anyways, it's a very handy trick that allows you to flip the camera to look behind you and then with another click flips it back.

The most important thing to make the Belkin effective when tanking is to make sure that your threat rotation abilities are on the easiest reachable buttons. Let me explain. Bloodrage is up there because you only use it every minute. Heroic strike, well, that's just something I find easy to use when it's there. Then, following a similar logic, thunder clap and demo shout are both next to each-other, because they always go together when fighting a boss as mitigation abilities. That's the logic behind my keybinds.

Now I know that the speedpad is expensive, but I highly recommend it to any tank that's having trouble using keybinds and that wants to spot clicking. Trust me, I thought it was one of those things I'd never get used to and stop trying after 10 minutes like I did with my trackball, but no. It's actually not that hard to be used to it. It takes time. Lots of time. I must have changed the keybinds on that thing about 15 times, but still. Once you found the perfect setup, you just need to practice and your gameplay is sure to improve.

Just make sure you practice outside of a guild raid first and don't take it out of the box and try it out for the first time when you have to maintank Kazrogal and tank all the MH trash and suddenly realize you have no idea what you're doing, start screwing up your rotation and taking crushing blows repeatedly because you can't find the shield block key... err... not that I have ever done that!

New Improved UI

2008-06-18T15:25:00.003+02:00

I know I haven't posted in months, but I'm feeling seriously bored.

Basically what I did with my UI was making it all automatized. My 2 lower bars have all the most important abilities, but I use almost all of those on my Belkin-n52te (I'll make a post about how it is too).

The oh-crap abilities are put above my character frame to make them easier to click. I've often been too slow on last stand, shield wall or such because they were all the way down in my action bars.

Remember: the most important abilities, you have to key-bind. All the oh-crap ones must be big and easily accessible. That's all you need to know about a tank's UI.

There are of course a couple of extra handy things, like scrolling combat text that helps you see the incoming damage and how you mitigate it, grid, that allows you to see who's dying in your raid so that you could be prepared for any eventuality.

New trinkets

2008-04-03T09:16:00.002+02:00

Sorry for the long time without posting, but I'm back.

Anywho, 2.4 came and it has very good trinkets in store for us. First of all, the Commendation of Kael'Thas, drops from 3rd boss in heroic MGT, and is a huge chunck of stamina combined with a nice dodge boost of 8% if you get low on HP.

The second trinket, also drops from 3rd boss, but will be a bit trickier to get since most melee DPS will want it too and they should get priority. It's the Shard of contempt. There's not much that needs to be said, but 44 expertise rating is an insane threat boost and will bring most tanks geared around my level to reach the dodged-attacks cap. The proc is also a very frequent 230 AP which adds even more threat. I'd use this baby in any high threat fights.

This is just a tiny post to get back on track. The next one will be better, and it will be called, "How to succeed in MGT".

Cheers everybody.

Mallet of the tides

2008-02-09T00:07:00.000+01:00

I finally snatched Mallet of the tides from that ugly blue beast. It feels good. It feels great. The expertise from it is just great, and everything from it is just pure awesome.

I decided to put Mongoose on it. As I see it, Executioner is more for extra threat, and I prefer having some extra safety avoidance from mongoose.

Of course, it's not cheap, but highly worth it.

How to deal with yer inner demon

2008-02-05T19:52:00.000+01:00

Quick tips about Leo's Inner Demon phase.

Put on trash gear (lots of SBV). The boss doesn't hit that hard.
Accumulate rage during demon phase until he summons your inner demon
Go into battle stance. Use Devastates, Shield slams and Heroic strikes.
Absolutely make sure you spell reflect his shadow bolts. They take out about 40% of his HP.
Spam execute as soon as possible.

It's actually easier for us than for some DPS classes!

Prot PVP

2008-02-03T11:11:00.000+01:00

So some might be wondering how it's possible, some might have heard about this, so I'll make a very short and simple tutorial on how to pvp as prot.

You need Shield block value. That is probably the number one thing you need. That is because the more shield block value you have, the bigger your crits with shield slams will be . In my normal tanking gear I crit for 1200 in PVP, whilst in my PVP gear I reach up to 2500 (crit) on a low armor class (leather or cloth). Ideally, anything above 500 SBV (shield block value) is enough to have some fun!
Next step is the hardest: you need to combine SBV gear and stack as much attack power (and crit, but pieces with SBV and crit on are nearly inexistant) as you can. That means putting +str gems on your SBV gear (which will also increase your SBV by a tiny amount).
The talents: now there's no strict talent build, all you need is to be smart and get stuff that will be useful for PVP. Cruelty is of course a huge must, along with tactical mastery, improved shield bash (nice for interrupting) and then talents that will increase your survivability.

Sadly, this will only work in battlegrounds and you wont be able to improve your gear in any way through PVP items since they have no SBV at all. Still, it sure is a great feeling when you see those squishies getting slammed so hard they can't believe it's coming from a protection warrior!

Karazhan starting gear

2008-01-29T19:17:00.000+01:00

Stop looking! There's only one answer: Badge gear. Badge gear badge gear badge gear.

Badge gear is extremely nice, and the funny thing is, lots of guilds that are starting Karazhan have their Main Tank geared with heroics, making it so much easier, so much faster. Downside is, you'll prolly pass on half the loot you get in Karazhan, because the badge gear is so much better.

Still, if your guild is starting Karazhan and you want to tank at your best, get yourself a max amount of badge gear (see my Badge farming guide). As Veneretio said, if you actually get all the badge gear you can tank Black Temple! So what are you waiting for? Don't worry about heroics being "hard". That's just not true. Follow my guide, and as long as you don't have catastrophic gear and your healer is trustworthy you'll be fine.

Your usual marks settup

2008-01-29T18:48:00.000+01:00

This post is taken from my "Manic Protection - A guide to the new warrior tanks" that I'm writing at the moment, so you might see it again.

I thought I'd note down the usual marks I put on the targets when I'm doing an instance or raiding, and I realized they are always the same. I highly suggest binding them to F keys, it makes marking so much faster!

F1: Skull (Kill target)

F2: Cookie (Offtank target - this means if you're alone you need to tank both)

F3: Star (Sheep or Shackle target)

F4: Diamond (Sheep or Shackle target 2)

F5: Triangle (Banish target or Offtank target 2)

F6: Square (Frost Trap target)

F7: Moon (Ugly raid mark - doesn't deserve a usage)

F8: Cross (Sap target or Offtank target 3)

- After the marks:

Crowd control is usually done after the pull (unless it's a sap of course). I wouldn't recommend CC-pulling, especially when you have to tank 2-3 mobs, since it will take you some time to get all of em on you, and during that time they could be 1 shotting a DPS.

As far as kill priority goes, have a look at the type of mobs you have to fight. Get the healers or the casters first (or with annoying abilities such as mind controlling, spawning extra mobs, fearing...).

Fathom Lord - Just a couple of tips

2008-01-28T18:54:00.000+01:00

Now, Fathom Lord is often referred to as a big meanie, a progression stopper. I personally do not see why. All you need are 8 solid healers and 2 good tanks.

Anywho, here's a couple of tips for the tanks out there that might have to tank the Boss soon.

Kill the Shaman add first. Trust me, it just works.
Once the Shaman add is dead, you will have (if placed correctly - see Bosskillers for the correct placements, except switch Shaman with Hunter) a long way to run and kite the boss. Now it's really easy: as soon as he pops a Spitfire Totem, run like hell to the other side of the room. The totem will get out of range of you and your healers, and you'll be safe for another 10 seconds. As soon as he pops a new totem, run back to the starting place. If done correctly, the first totem will inevitably have disappeared when you come back there, and you'll be safe again. Once you get used to it, nothing could be more simple. Your healers need to run around too thought.
Once all the adds are dead, it's a piece of cake. Tell all your DPS to nuke from the start since you will have built a huge amount of threat by the time the 3 adds are dead, and you don't need to worry about over-eager DPSers. At that point you don't need to kite him anymore since the totems will get nuked by the raid.

That is all. Simple right? As long as your healers can heal you enough there is no reason to screw up on this boss. In fact, we brought 8 healers with us, first try we wiped after 15 seconds because of some placement issues and second try he went down for the first time. Real easy.

My UI

2008-01-28T17:56:00.001+01:00

So, basically, here's my current UI:

I find it very convenient because I get the bars from Bartender, all 3 stacked close together so I can use pretty much any ability, and right above it I have my health bar and the mob's health bar and casting bar. Becomes useful when you have to interrupt a spell and you're looking at the mob's casting bar.

Long story short, it's a compilation of addons, mostly really famous ones like Pitbull (unit frames), Bartender (bars), Grid (raid layout), SWstats (DPS meters), Sunn Viewport Art (the black pannel on the bottom) and the classics like Titan.

What pots to use?

2008-01-27T11:31:00.001+01:00

Well, quick post here.

Here's the main stuff I use in raids where it's worth it:

My usual package is:

Elixir of mastery

Elixir of major defense

Spicy crawdad

I sometimes switch the major defense for a greater fortitude one, but only on particular cases.

At the start of the fight, I usually pop a Mighty Rage Potion, and then Ironshield Potion throughout the rest of the fight. Of course, don't go chugging loads of Ironshield if the damage you receive is magic! Save 'em for melee dmg heavy fights.

The Ironshield potions I seriously recommend everyone having, since they are incredibly nice and make a huge difference (2500 extra armor!).

They are not really expensive either, all you need is to find a dedicated crafter and get him loads of Ancient Lychen and motes of earth.

Badge farming guide

2008-01-23T15:23:00.000+01:00

So this is the time where everybody farms badges like crazy because of the new heroic gear and such, or at least it was some time ago!

Without even realizing it, I have farmed a decent amount of badges and got myself most of that voodoo wooden strange new ZA style gear. If you take everything into account and the fact that I had no badges saved up when 2.3 came out, I farmed (not in this order):

35 (cloak)
35 (bracers)
75 (pants)
35 (neck)
60 (belt)
60 (gloves)

I'm currently saving up for the paladin tank chest at the moment since Nightbane is very cruel to me (killed him about 38 times and never seen PZ drop).

Anywho, my point is, I didn't even play that much, especially not back then. The thing is, getting badges from heroics is really easy, if you set up everything right, and considering the new badge tank gear is so good, I thought I'd write down some tips on how to farm as many badges as possible, as fast as possible.

Preparation:

Find yourself 4-6 good guild members or friends that play frequently and are of different classes. You will almost never have to worry about your spot in the group, since you are the tank, you've got the V.I.C. pass (very important class).
Don't worry too much about class setup, as long as everyone knows what they're doing, Mechanar can be done without a warlock... seriously...
Talk it out with your friends, see at what time they are available for a quick heroic, get everything nice and organized.

Ok, now for the important part: where to?

There are some heroics that are worth going to, others that will really make you waste your time. So here's what you do:

Daily quest instance comparison

Here are the heroics that, even with the daily quest, aren't worth your time: Arcatraz, Durnholde Keep, Shattered Halls (I know the Champion of the Naaru title is the new flavor of the month but that place is horribe).

Some others are based on personal preference, for example, Sethekk halls only gives 4 badges with the daily quest. You gotta ask yourself: is it worth putting up with that insufferable instance with 2-3 of the most annoying mobs in game when I could be doing heroic Underbog and get the same amount of badges, in around the same time?

I will not take into account the 24g you get for the daily. I agree it's nice, but when it comes to doing a horrible instance or a fun one, I forget about it.

Most of the others are a decent place to go considering you get some badges and they're not too long.

When you don't have the daily quest

When you don't have the daily, all that matters is to get lots badges / hour. In that case, there are 3 winners and a 4th hypothetical one. Underbog and Mechanar, clear winners, since they are very easy heroics with a good amount of badges. They can both be done under 50 minutes, so that's 4 badges in 50 minutes (assuming you don't have the daily).

The hypothetical one is Mana tombs. If you have someone with you that can summon Yor (big fat dog, extra boss, drops a badge, only doable if someone, after doing lots of annoying things, can summon him). So, if someone can summon him, then mana tombs becomes 4 badges in 50 minutes, which is good too (be careful though, the spellbinders there are really nasty. It's time to shine and spam spell reflect).

Yes, I missed one. I'll unveil it in the next paragraph.

The big scary heroics

I call em that because most people are afraid of them, and I must admit I was at first too, but when you actually try them you realize they are just as easy as every other.

Example: Shadow Lab, Black Morass, Botanica.

When you get a daily for these ones, do it, it might be a bit longer, or you might not be used to the instance, but it'll do you some good to switch once in a while.

This brings me to my final point (yes I'm almost done rambling). Black Morass.

Did you know that Black Morass is extremely undervalued? When you think about it, BM is 3 badges in 30 minutes (better than Mech/Underbog) and with the daily goes up for 5 badges in 30 minutes!

Long story short, heroic BM is by far my favourite daily!

Summary

The good ones: Black Morass, Underbog, Mechanar, Mana tombs (only if blablabla).

The ones you do once in a while: Shadow Lab, Botanica, Blood Furnace, Slave pens, Steamvaults

The best thing to do (ignoring the daily quest in this hypothesis), is to do 1x BM + 1x UB or Mech (or both if you have time).

That will bring you to 7 badges in 1h20 or 11 badges in 2h10 if you do UB and Mech.

PS. None of this takes into account that you might need loot from the heroic bosses themselves. But remember it's not worth going crazy over some heroic drop and doing a crappy heroic just to get it when you can get so much better from badges, karazhan and such.

PPS. I know I didn't mention karazhan, which in facts beats all heroics when you have it on speed farm, but I wanted to keep the raid content out.

A few tips for Lurker

2008-01-21T11:41:00.000+01:00

So our guild downed Lurker for the first time last night, and I thought he was really easy from a tank point of view (although he hits quite hard) when you know the tricks. This has probably been said somewhere on strategy guides, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

So, the basics of tanking Lurker are:

1. While your guildies are fishing, you just spam auto attack button. This will allow you to get the first hit on him very early, and it might seem negligible, but every little bit helps.

2. When he spouts, you can jump in the inside pool (strange pool), it's really convenient because you can jump out much faster and don't have to run back to him. You need to keep in mind that as soon as you're not in melee range of Lurker, one of the melee DPS will die (unless you have a feral offtank that's right behind you in threat, which should be your safety net).

3. The whirlwind, the most annoying part. It's quite easy to deal with it. If you place yourself on the edge of the strange pool (very very close to Lurker), when the Whirlwind hits you will get knocked back but still be in melee range since you started so close to him. That works well and prevents any DPS from dying while you run back.

That's how I did it, and it was very convenient and easy. Of course, there might be other ways of doing it, maybe even better ways, so any comments will be greatly appreciated!

Testing

2008-01-03T21:02:00.001+01:00

Welcome everyone! This is my tanking blog, where I'll be writing down stuff about tanking, tips, funny things and various crap. Don't take anything I write in here as a maxim though!