The 8 words any paladin in tier 10 must know.

"It's not a dress, it's a war kilt,"

Honestly, even though judgement armor was the best looking tier of all time, I'm not a fan of the plate mail dress. However, there's another phrase we should all learn.

"At least it's not tier 5!"

How Do You Tank?

Well, Elle, the warlock, turned shaman, turned tank-on-the-side, ran a healer survey that looked into the personal style and opinions of healers across the blogosphere. She then asked for someone to cook up a tanking version. Well, I don't know anything about healing, but I've been tanking since my first level, so I guess I'll kick one off.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
I run with Dämmerung, a human protection paladin with a 0/53/18 spec.

What is your usual tanking environment?
I run 10 and 25 man raids, with an emphasis on 10 man progression, along with the occasional 5 man.

What is your favorite encounter to tank, and why?
Firefighter is a personal favorite from a tanking standpoint, although I know my healers hate it, because it presents a comprehensive tanking challenge. Phase one is a phase of personal mitigation through cooldown coordination, phase two is a phase of raid mitigation and maximum personal damage output, phase three is a phase of rapid add pickup and movement, and phase four is a complex kite. Firefighter is essentially two phases of main tanking, and two phases of off tanking, and due to the movement and spawning of the fires and frost bombs the movement of the fight is different each time. If you can solo tank firefighter, then you are capable, from a skill standpoint, of tanking any encounter in the game.

What is your least favorite encounter to tank, and why?
Probably Loatheb, it's fairly mundane, and there have been some attempts where I literally left myself auto attacking so I could go check the fridge about a minute into the fight. Patchwerk is a close second, but at least he has enough incoming damage to make for some interesting kills.

What do you think is the biggest strength of your class, and why?
Paladins are currently a very strong tanking class, and while Druids have better survivability, and Warriors have a more diverse toolkit, Paladins are untouchable when it comes to single target threat. This allows our raid's DPSers to go full bore, without even the need for a feign death or invis, and on the fights where they can get buffs to imbalance things, we can salv them ourselves to maintain the threat lead. Also, the lack of a spammy queue move like heroic strike mean that we're the only tanking class for whom carpal tunnel is not a valid concern.

What do you think is the biggest weakness of your class, and why?
Lack of an interrupt. I know that druids are in the same boat as us, but lacking anything that can interrupt on a semi regular basis is incredibly frustrating. Having to tote my personal pet enhance shaman around to any fights that require an interrupt when another tanking class could do it on their own is kinda embarrassing. I'm not saying that we should get the absurd amount of interrupts that the warriors from the Swiss Army get, but something that's off the GCD with like a 12-14 second cooldown would be a huge quality of life bonus.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best tanking assignment for you?
Whatever's the toughest assignment for the encounter, with three caveats. Snap AoE aggro on more than 4 mobs is difficult for paladins, so whelp tanking on Sarth or Ony tends to end up being very... interesting. Two, is the aforementioned lack of an interrupt, so put me on Steelbreaker, not Stormcaller Brundir. And Three, that the other Prot Pally in my guild, who's better than me, isn't already doing the tough work. Other than that, I'll dig up adds, I'll kite snaplashers, kite worms, haul constructs, and any other role that might be less glamorous than letting Ignis punch me in the face, but is much more difficult.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the most?
I feel that the amazing toolbox that a warrior has lends themselves well to complimenting a paladin. Being able to hit interrupts, fly across the battlefield, and control mobs efficiently makes them solid at cleaning up anything that escapes. Another paladin would be a close second due to the raid utility that they bring, bringing two different external cooldowns plus LoH.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the least?
Well, I guess I would have to say a druid, because it seems like they don't exist on my server. Plus they don't bring a consistent interrupt, nor can many of their external cooldowns (rebirth, innervate, etc.), be used while actually tanking. Their survivability is enviable, but their utility is not.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
I tank on my laptop, with my touchpad... it's my secret shame.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
People who aren't tanks pulling things. I pull when I'm ready, and if it's something that requires an oddball pull from a hunter or imp, I'll ask for it. Otherwise, you're just making my life harder.

Do you feel your class/spec is balanced with respect to the other tanking classes?
I feel that while the classes are missing some of the tools, for the most part, aside from DKs, all the tanking classes are currently in a good place. Death Knights got dismantled in patch 3.2, and need some serious work to fix. Some of those things are being addressed in patch 3.3, others, such as the lack of an AP debuff, still leave DKs kinda out in the cold.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
I use Recount to figure out why I died, and if there was something I could have done to prevent it. TankadinTPS to check my threat output. But really what I've found to be the best tool for self improvement as a tank is my own Catholic guilt. I make a point of knowing exactly how I want an encounter to go down. I make a note of every little error I make, be it something drastic, like accidentally diving into the chasm Kologarn stands in, or minor, like like accidentally facing a parry hasting mob into the melee for a second. Those errors eat at me, and drive me to never repeat them. And while it probably isn't that healthy, it has gotten me from on a trial account during Hallow's End 2008, to riding a Rusted Proto Drake with the Starcaller title before Hallow's End 2009, so I can't complain too much.

What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have with your tanking class?
Paladins are no longer the "Hyjal Trash Tank". Death Knights and Druids are actually surpassing our sustained AoE threat output, and Warriors are now much better on the actual pickup than we are. The days of "Stand in my consecrate and ye shall live!" are over. We've given that up for the ability to be legitimate main tanks, versatile enough to fulfill most any role required.

What do you think is the toughest thing for new players of your class to learn about tanking?
That there's more to being a paladin tank than simply tanking. You can learn and master the 969 rotation, you can have your positioning down perfectly, but because you are a paladin, there is yet more you can do. You should be able to: Throw Hand of Salvation on an overzealous DPSer, Hand of Freedom a player snared in the path of the bad stuff on the floor, LoH an OoM healer or freshly rezed player, Hand of Protection a healer who drew the ire of the whelps, and find the right spot in an encounter for the clutch divine sacrifice to make life easier for your raid and your healers. You need to be able to do all that, and STILL do everything all the other tanks are asked to do... except interrupt.

If someone were to evaluate your tanking ability via tools like fraps, recount, and World of Logs, what tendencies would they notice?
I'm extremely strong in terms of survivability and sustained threat. However, I tend to be very minimalist in my movements, which is nice for fights like Thorim where you're supposed to keep him still, but has occasionally gotten me yelled at by the melee DPSers who find Grobbulus' slime pools to be creeping a little close. This also leads to me being a little weak on the initial pickup, because I have a tendency to pick where I want to tank the mob, and get the mob there. Sometimes that becomes frustrating when I taunt a mob, and watch a Warlock conflag it before it gets within 10 yards of me. I do however multitask very well, and can use the full range of paladin abilities in my tanking style.

Stamina or Avoidance, and why?
If forced to choose, I'll take stamina, due to the encounter design in wrath, pretty much everything that threatens a tank is unavoidable. However, that's not to say that avoidance is useless, I'll take everything blizzard gives me.

Which tanking class do you understand the least?
Due to their scarcity, I have much less experience with bears than any other class.

What addons or macros do you currently use to aid you in tanking?
I use Icehud and Parrot to give me a good idea of what's going on with me and the mob I'm tanking, without having to look away from the floor from which all bad things arise. I use omen, not so much to track my own threat, but to track the other raiders so I know if someone might need a salve. I use pitbull to allow my shift click out the various hand and cleanse spells if need be. Recount for post fight analysis, and CLSaver because I always forget to start logging. I also use tanktotals for raid warnings when I use cooldowns. DBM is also a godsend. And to control this unwieldy mess of programs, along with my non raiding addons, I use Addon Control Panel.

Do you strive for a balance in tanking stats, or do you stack some higher than others, and why?
I tend to stack stamina, every gem I use has a stamina component to it, however, I strive to maximize my itemization, I'll hit my socket bonuses, unless it's something incredibly stupid, like spell pen. I throw Agil/Stam in red sockets, Def/Stam in Yellow sockets, and straight stam in blue sockets. When choosing enchants, I tend to stay away from the oddball proc enchants like Bladeward and Blood Draining, and select the enchants that give me the best itemization, like Accuracy.

And now comes the romp. I'm gonna pick a few of the tanking bloggers that I read with regularity and hopefully they'll pick this thing up too.

• I'll start with Elle, as she was the one who came up with the idea.
• Next up will be Honors, of Honor's Code.
• And we have to have a warrior, so Tarsus, from Tanking For Dummies is a great choice to represent the original tank.
• Ridach, at Righteous Defense was one of the first wow bloggers I started reading.
• Because we need a Death Knight, I'd like the very analytical Gravity of Pwnwear to give it a shot.
• And because we have entirely too few druids, and alliance tanks, the eponymous Big Bear Butt.
  

More LoH stupidity.

This just in on the PTR...

Lay on Hands: This ability now places Forbearance on the target
and cannot be used on a target with Forbearance.

*Sigh* I don't understand the thought process here. Honestly. Lay on Hands isn't even usable in Arenas, so this isn't a PvP nerf. It was a decent tool in the holy paladin's arsenal, however, it was of minimal use at best for protection specs. Now, however, it's a real problem for Holy Paladins healing Protection Paladins. Forebearance is a poorly thought out mechanic, and is useful a fix here as a gauze bandage soaked in anthrax.

Now, because someone else cast something on me, I can't use my shield wall. Holy Paladins, who had legitimate uses for a talented LoH to improve tank survivability on physical damage encounters are now barred from using it as such due to locking a paladin out of his tanking cooldowns. You don't see warriors unable to use Shield Wall for two minutes because someone put Pain Supression on them.

The obvious solution for this is to remove the forbearance requirement from Divine Protection. However, giving paladins a chainable damage reduction would imbalance PvP according to devs. If only they could tie the DR to some sort of tanking stat that no ret or holy paladin would carry, kinda like they did with Ardent Defender and Icebound Fortitude...

Listen up crabman, because I'm going to solve all your problems right here. Here's your new design for Divine Protection in 3.3.

Divine Protection: prevents damage scaling with defense rating to a maximum of 50% at 689 defense rating.

That's all you need. No more need to worry about it's strength in PvP, or how it can be chained with Avenging Wrath. Tanks can use their threat boost without worrying about their survivability, while Rets can use divine protection all they want and gain nothing for it. Holy Paladins can cast lay on hands on whoever they want without fear of gimping their own cooldowns.

Honestly, we're the only tanking class with a debuff associated with our primary cooldown. Who's bright idea was that?

The Chill of the Throne.

Well, a lot of bloggers have thrown in their two copper on the Chill of the Throne, the 20% nerf to dodge in the upcoming Icecrown Citadel raid instance. This has brought up concerns with tanking balance, due to the imbalanced distribution for avoidance between the tanking classes. So I decided to take a look at how this is going to affect each class.

Warriors: This will be a reduction in the amount of revenge procs they get, however, the existence of critical block means that if the bosses hit softer than the ones in Ulduar or ToC, then shield block will become a significant physical damage reduction cooldown.

Druids: Dodge is the only source of avoidance that druids have, however, because of their lower avoidance, they have been blessed with more stamina and armor than their fellow tanks. This causes the increase in damage intake to actually be lower than it is for the other tanking classes. This will also help reduce the overlap in Savage Defense usage, when combined with the increased crit and AP they will gain from the higher itemization.

Paladins: Paladins are getting hit pretty hard. The 20% dodge reduction makes it difficult for a paladin in a serious progression gear set to remain unhittable with just Holy Shield up. Normally, paladins were the ones with the most to gain from decreased boss melee damage, because they could count on block value as true mitigation. This is no longer the case. We will find ourselves relying on redoubt procs to fill out the last portion of the attack table. This also severely decreases the overall value of our T10 4 piece set bonus.

Death Knights: Death Knights will be hit the hardest by the changes. They lack any form of block, so they don't benefit from the decreased melee damage, as the decreased avoidance will cause them to take pretty much the same incoming DPS as they are now, it will just be less spiky. They also suffer from a threat nerf in the form of Rune Strike. Their threat will suffer more than a warrior's because rune strike is their primary threat tool, and they don't have block to proc it, so they'll lose a greater portion of their procs. They will, however, likely be the highest avoidance tank in ICC, due to their higher parry values.

What can healers expect? Not a significant amount of change in the healing style. Damage intake should remain reasonably close to the current model, however, the spikes will be less drastic. You'll still be spammy in your heals, but more often there will actually be a need for the healing, so the overhealing will drop significantly.

This effects overall stat weights. Decreased boss damage increases the value of stamina because it reduces the gap between the magic numbers that buy you another hit between heals. It also increases the value of block value, and by extension, strength for shield users, and agility for bears. Agility in particular jumps in value for druids, because it gives them more block rating, block value, and armor. Dodge and Parry become a little less valuable, because with lower overall avoidance, more avoidance becomes less valuable. However, the value of dodge versus parry remains the same. You should not be gemming for parry in icecrown, unless you've already got more than 1.88 times as much dodge rating.

One serious gemming consideration I'd suggest for any tanks out there right now is to replace any +dodge gems with +agility gems. The increased armor will make up for the loss in avoidance, with a healthy chunk of threat baked in. While bears benefit more, all tanks will benefit more from agility than dodge.

From an itemization standpoint, I don't think this has pushed us to the point where we should abandon all attempts at balance and throw solid majestic zircons in every slot. I do think, however, that dual stamina trinkets with on demand cooldowns should be the standard for the normal progression tanking gear set. A Scarab+Heart of Iron combo will serve you well. This has, oddly enough, made Fervor of the Frostborn slightly less useless. For undergeared tanks who want to attempt to push into Icecrown who don't have access to some of these trinkets, the Glyph of Indomitability is actually more powerful the lower your overall gear level is due to the inverse scaling of armor. For primarily physical damage encounters, the Glyph will yield more effective health than the Heart of Iron if you have less than 24k armor. However, the glyph is absolutely useless on fights where the majority of the damage is magical in nature.

All said, the key to the majority of these predictions is the assumption that Blizzard will tone down the melee damage of the bosses in Icecrown. The mechanics are the deciding factor. This makes all tanks even more vulnerable to special boss atacks that do not reset their swing timer, such as Impale or Fusion Punch. The risk of having an unavoided hit line up with those abilities in an unhealably short window has increased. This has been the major threat to tanks in most difficult encounters in recent memory. Sustained melee damage is only a threat to groups with undergeared tanks or healers, and this is going to punish them the most. Most of the guilds that are already preparing for Icecrown will have no trouble with the Chill, however, the guilds that are new to raiding will find themselves getting bounced out even faster than guilds in similar positions did in Ulduar.

The Fundamentals of Tanking: Perception in Ulduar

In an earlier post, I listed some of the fundamentals of tanking. The first thing I listed was perception, your awareness of what's going on. This is especially vital in Ulduar. In this regard Deadly Boss Mods is a godsend. So much so that I have made it required for all raiders in my guild.

Ulduar is a true test of a tank's skill, in every position. There are fights that require a lot of movement, like Ignis. There are fights that test your ability to recover from disruption, such as Auriaya. There are fights that test your coordination with your healers, such as Mimiron and Vezax. There are fights that test your ability to quickly pick up and establish threat on multiple adds, such as Thorim and Razorscale. Nearly all of the fights have something that you shouldn't be standing in.

Your UI setup is one of the keys to aiding your perception in these encounters. Having a clean UI that allows full view of your surroundings is of paramount importance. Keep the chat log open, so that you can catch any DBM prompts that you might have missed. A conveniently placed threat meter, such as Omen, is also a necessity. Keep things that you deem important near your character, so you don't have to look away as much to get information you want. I personally use IceHUD to bring up my health, mana, and debuffs, and those of my target. I would recommend it to any aspiring tanks. The necessity of raid frames depends on the organizational skills of your raid leader. I always make sure that the healers are all in group one, and that tanks and any other needed personnel are in group five. I'm in group five, and pull group one out using the default raid frames. In every fight, you will want to know the disposition of the healers and the tanks at a minimum. There will be other people who you'll want to track in specific encounters, such as the harpoon chucker on razorscale, but the healers and tanks are non negotiable.

This brings me to what you actually do with this setup. In any fight there are two states. There is a dynamic state where you do not have control of the situation. This is usually during the pull, when adds spawn, and when a boss must be moved. Then there is a stable state, which is when you have established aggro, gotten in position, and all is good.

During a dynamic stage of a fight, you will need to focus away from your character. Locate the mob that you need to pickup or find the next spot you're moving to, those are your priorities. If a void zone, rune of death, AOE of general badness spawns under your character, it's no big deal because you're going to have moved out of it before it ticks. However, if one of those spawns where you're heading, if you don't see that, you'll run into it right as it ticks. Your goal in dynamic stages are to gain control of the situation as quickly as possible and return it to a stable state.

During a stable state you should be focusing on your character's feet. If you're starting at the amazingly detailed boss model that's about to stave your skull in, you are wrong. Keep your eyes on the floor, always on the floor. Besides, odds are you can only see their crotch anyways. Don't be the tank that eats a void zone because you were too busy trying to look up Kel'Thuzad's skirt. Ensure that your character is not standing in something you should not be. Keep an eye on the DBM prompts so that you can anticipate and plan for changes in the fight as they come up. Your goal in the stable state is to be ready to survive the transition into the next dynamic phase of the fight.

Tanking in Ulduar can be a lot easier than it seems, if only you know the right places to look.

The Sword of Damocles Looms.

Oh boy. Well, Hiatus, the GM of Lëgacy had to take a hiatus from wow. The task of leading the guild has now fallen to me. I didn't really want this, but I guess I'll roll with it. There are several changes in the guild that I wanted to make, beginning with the website. You can now find us at http://legacy-destromath.guildlaunch.com/. We are recruiting, especially ranged DPS and AOE healers, but we'll take a serious look at all qualified applicants.

Dämmerung the Dragon Slayer.

Lëgacy began ostensibly as a casual raiding guild. But we've begun to walk a fine line between the casual and the hardcore as many would put it. We send two, sometimes three, 10 mans into Ulduar on Tuesdays, Maly25 and OS253D on Wednesday, Naxx 25 on Thursday, and Ulduar 25 on Friday and Saturday. But at the same time, we don't have a set attendance standard as long as you're active on the character, and we still send out loot via free rolls. It's kind of a weird dichotomy, and some of the guild members who are used to a more laid back atmosphere, well, a quote from a certain half night elf mongrel comes to mind.

Tensions sometimes run high in the raids as the guild leadership is pushing for crisper performance than some people are used to. And the increased difficulty in Ulduar isn't helping. We wiped over 60 times on Mimiron ten man before getting lucky with the pathing in phase four and not having the tank get run over during a laser barrage. Ignis 25 exposed the weaknesses of our healers, Auriaya 25 exposed the weaknesses of our tanks, and OS253D has shown the weakness of our DPSers. There's room for improvement all around, and people know this. However, I am quite proud of what the guild has accomplished thus far. We're pushing into the keepers on 25 man, and challenging Yogg-Saron himself in 10 man.

A few weeks ago, some of my friends in the guild and I decided to go roflstomping through Zul'Gurrub in an attempt to get a mage her polymorph: turtle. It was probably the most innocent fun we'd had in the game in a while. Just chilling out in vent, having fun, and accomplishing trivial personal goals. That stuck with me for a while, and I thought it was a great idea to implement for the guild. So, monday became Retro Raid night. We began in Molten Core, and blew through that in about a half hour with about 15 people. Great fun was had by all. The loot rules for the retro raid are simple, pass if it's class specific and not your class, greed otherwise. If there was a piece ou really wanted, it went to auction, and the proceeds went to the guild bank to fund progression raids. After the raid is over, a vote is taken, and the guild decides which instances will be run the next week. All pre-wrath instances are eligible.

After MC, the guild decided upon the raids for the next week, Onyxia and the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. This time we had 18 people attend. Onyxia died in under a minute, so fast in fact, that she was actually dead before she landed from phase 2, and we had to wait for her to come down for our loot. AQ40 was just as much fun. Something ridiculous like 30 mounts dropped, and aside from one wipe due to an early, clustered pull on C'thun, it was a complete success. The guild made about 3k gold on bids on some of the crazy items that dropped. The Vanquished Tentacle of C'thun alone fetched 1k, and I threw down 600g for the Eye of C'thun. Next week it was decided that we'd run Gruul's Lair and Blackwing Lair.

The first fight in Gruul's is an interesting one, especially when you've only got one mage and two other tanks. But as always, enough brute force will always prevail, and 20 level 80s is enough, no matter how much time your tanks spend running around as terrified bunny rabbits. We got to Gruul, and some of the guildies who were actually in Progression raiding guilds during TBC were giving us a basic rundown. The shatter was coming, and just as we were advised, we scattered. The shatter came, and our mage noted "Aw, hell, we could stack for that!". Immediately vent rang out with, "Stack on the tank!". Somewhere, burning crusade raiders are waking up in a cold sweat. After downing the big lummox, we hopped a port to Ironforge, and flew to Blackrock Mountain. After bumrushing 14 people through the BWL attunement, we ran through BWL. It was a bit of a drunken stagger. Vaelastrasz died just slowly enough to hit our ret paladin with burning adrenaline. Broodlord Lashlayer got leeroyed while all the adds were still alive and all the suppression's up, but he was zerged down quickly. All three drakes got pulled while a tank was afk, and we didn't even realize Chromaggus was a boss until someone noticed that that trash mob dropped an unusual amount of purples.

Then came Nefarian. As with all bosses that use mind control, Nef actually posed a threat to the raid group. His shadowflame is also still a potent weapon. So I quickly explained that the first shadowflame needed to be LoSed behind the throne, and to CC the mind controlled players. They kinda chuckled at the thought that a mere level 60 boss could actually harm us. We hit phase one, and I got mind controlled right off the bat, and I don't think anyone cared, until I brained our top DPS mage with the Wall of Terror. We downed the 42 drakonids, and Nefarian came down. I picked him up and noticed something odd. All but one of the healers in group 1 were dead, and all three of the DPS in the group with me and the OT were dead. *Sigh* I never pull out full raid frames, just the tanks and healers, so I wasn't quite sure how many people were down. So I asked how many people were still up. Five. The OT, a priest, and a shaman, who remembered what I said about the throne, and our Death Knight's former main, a level 71 rogue who had equipped his Onyxia Hide Cloak, and was looking awfully stylish in his full set of Bloodfang armor, and the third Thunderfury built on our server. But 5 level 80s stand little chance against the Lord of Blackrock, we wiped, the shaman rezzed, and we waited out the ridiculously long respawn timer. On the next pull, suddenly people remembered to hide behind the throne, and Nefarian went down for the count. The guild didn't make as much cash as we did in AQ40, but a ret paladin dropped 1k for three pieces of Judgement Armor, the finest looking teir set in the history of WoW, and I bid 500g for Nefarian's head, being the quest whore that I am.

I jaunted down to Stormwind, and showed off the cranium to King Wrynn, who promptly send me to hang it up at the gates, next to the head of Onyxia some other adventurer brought in.

Afterwords, we had the vote to decide what instance we're gonna hit next week. The result? Sunwell. Oh boy, see you on the other side...