Adventures in Tanking

Paladin invasion of Stratholme

2010-11-05T10:58:00.000Z

During my dash to finish up a couple of the factions for the Insane title, I've noticed something rather peculiar. Well, it was at first, but then I realised why it was happening

Basically, I spotted dozens [across a relatively short period of time] of unguilded Paladins ranging from level 60 onwards in Light's Hope Chapel in EPL. At first I only ever noticed the Alliance ones - since their nameplates were obvious as I have them turned on - but recently, I've spotted some Horde ones too. Because I'd only seen the Alliance ones at first, I was thinking it was possibly an Alliance specific quest for paladins - until I followed a couple.

One of my personal alarm bells for potential bots is non-fluid turns, especially when performed frequently. Bare in mind, it's only a little flag, and not a definite "OMG, THAT'S A BOT!!!1"
There are other factors to take into account.
For instance, when I brutally slaughtered them [...what? I play on a PvP server... :] they released pretty much instantly - if the jerky turns from earlier were due to keyboard turning, then it's unlikely that the person would be able to hit the release button so quickly [bit more generalisation on my part, but the red flags mount up].
The final bit I noticed, while not indicative of a bot, was definite signs of cheating in some manner. I followed all the way to the back gate of Stratholme, and watched as they just ran through it. No-one on the other side to open it for them; no stopping to open it themselves; and it definitely wasn't already open. [This was on a few of them, by the way]

So, the TL;DR: the gold farmers are using paladins to farm stratholme undead side. And from what I can gather, they're in prot spec

The More You Know...

2010-10-23T10:21:00.000+01:00

... and knowing is half the battle.
You may recall my post from the other day, where I mentioned about threat issues in a PuG. Well, I just discovered why I was having major issues.
Part my fault, the rest was the DK. I wonder if you can see where this is going.

I've not played a DK for quite a while - got a level 65 somewhere, and a 61 that's tanked a couple of times - so, I didn't really pay too much attention to their changes. Of course, I should have realised this one would happen based on the change to a dedicated tanking tree. You see, in days of yore, when knights were ~~bold~~ tanks, they did so in Frost Presense for their added threat. Well, all that has changed.
Because it's blood spec that has the tanking duties now, it makes sense that Blood Presense is the one for tanking in [interesting note, they swapped the names and icons of the 2 presenses in game, so BP uses the FP spell and vice versa - check the comments of each to see what I mean].
So, with that little explanation... can you see where I'm still going?

Yes. The DK was in Blood Presense. I noticed, and didn't say anything, because I was looking for Frost Presense!
So, basically - it was the fault of the FailPlayer DK for not going into Frost - I miss elitist group for pointing out specs to me - costing himself DPS at the same time.
And, it was my fault for not reading up on the changem since it does affect me.

More PuG annoyances

2010-10-21T21:11:00.001+01:00

One of the many things that irritates me about PuGs is the way they almost all refuse to use names. It's always "Hey, tank!" or "FFS, healer!"
The other players are typically called by their class.
It's as if they're allergic to using the name of the character. Hell, you can even use an abbreviation most of the time - at least it shows you're paying attention...
I'd love to be in a run with one of those like I had a while back:
Tank = me, paladin
Healer = paladin
DPS1 = paladin
DPS2 = paladin
DPS3 = mage.
I think their head would explode.

I have just "finished" my Warrior's first run in to Old Stratholme. Notice the quotations - that's because we didn't even make the second boss.
The first healer DC'd [probably fake] just as we pulled the first boss. The second quit group midway through the next pack. I know the reason for the second's, and can guess the first's. Me.
Or rather, they perceived it was me.
I don't think I was able to perform a single pull in the run - besides Meathook - because either the DK or Balance druid would pull for me - who ever got their first. And, with them in ICC10HC/25 level gear, I just had no way of controlling the mobs. Sure, I suppose a really good tank could have managed things a bit more, but this was just beyond me.
It's not as if the hunter in the group couldn't have helped a little with misdirection...

Easy gear

2010-10-20T16:19:00.000+01:00

One definite thing I'm liking from the patch is how much faster it will be to be able to upgrade gear from the old badge vendors. So much so, that on my warrior I am pretty much skipping the Badge of Triumph vendor where possible, and going straight to the Badge of Frost.
I've decided that the tier 10 helm and shoulders will be my first purchases - the helm is a massive upgrade for me currently, although I bought the shoulders last night purely because I think they look awesome - and then the non-tier chest and gloves. For legs, I may try to get the gold together for Pillars of Might. The rest? Not worked that out just yet.

I'd always said to myself, that once I hit 80 on Popeseye, I'd not buy any upgrades from the AH. However, last night I decided to spend just a little. Prices seem quite low, so I got myself a Titansteel Shield Wall [I'd hoped to have gotten the shield drop from HC Old Stratholme by now, but I've not even gotten a run there yet!]. Also spent about 20G on some ilvl 200 blue wrists, since the ones I had were really low level - granted, the wrists I bought were DPS ones, they were still an upgrade for me [I only lost about 0.2% dodge]. Due to these upgrades, my average ilvl - according to the in-game information - is now at 198... So close to breaking the 200. I have a fair few 187 bits of gear just now though, and I don't know what value they place on blues compared to purples.

On Baberth, I got myself her Tier-10 shoulders [Lightsworn Shoulderguards] as well yesterday, simply because they were cheap enough and they're obvious bling. I'm pretty much just going to get tier gear for her, simply for collection sake. Yes, I like to collect tier gear [and that rhymes :] and I only need the dungeon set 1 chest to be able to get dungeon set 2 complete - I finished the quest line the other day, apart from the "Saving the Best to Last" quest due to lack of chest. Which reminds me - I still have a single piece of the purple tier 2 recolour to get...
Next though, I'll be getting the last of the Tier 9 that I didn't get round to getting. Tier 8 and completing Tier 7 will take that little bit longer, however.
Finally, I managed to get my Violet Proto Drake last night. That elusive Hallowed Helm dropped for me from the bag you get when you kill the Horseman. I've been waiting almost a year for that little bastard! :D That puts me at 7025 points - mainly missing Raid and PvP achievements. Probably need to wait until cata to get those, when they can be face-rolled ):

Am I Fail?

2010-10-18T14:28:00.001+01:00

A few recent posts by various bloggers have me wondering:

Would I be perceived as a FailPlayer/M&S?

This concern stems from claimed attitudes that FailPlayers will have; one of these being that the new patch will cause them to leave their current class and/or spec in droves to a new Flavour of the Month. Why am I concerned:

In vanilla, I was a druid [feral kitty spec to level 60, then resto as that was the required raiding spec back then];

In TBC, I was a combat spec rogue;

In WotLK, I started as my rogue, but combat just wasn't the same, and I couldn't get my fingers to work the muti spec. So, I switched to Prot Pala;

Now, come Cata, I'm considering jumping ship again - this time to Prot Warrior.

To me, this makes me wonder ig I fit the bill. Sure, it's only been on an expansion that I've switched, but I have typically completely abandoned the previous character in place of something I have more fun playing.

On the outside, then yes: I probably do.

On the inside, I'm not so sure...

Let me explain and expand upon why.

First, I hope you've seen, that I do my best to understand the class I'm playing - check up EJ, various forums and blogs, that sort of thing - so that I don't just blindly follow the advise, but try to know why I'm doing such things.

I keybind and macro to the best of my abilities - including mouseover taunts [and soon, mouseover faerie fire on my druid once he gets it]

I listen to advice and try to improve

When I'm in an instance, I don't just play for me

And finally, the reasons for my character switching isn't because they're FotM classes and specs. Hell, I tried the FotM spec on my rogue and hated it - and specced him straight back to one I enjoyed playing. No, my switches stem from my personal enjoyment. As stated, I started as a druid. My first alt was a rogue - since I'd enjoyed the sneaky of kitty spec, and was on a PvP server. So when I started afresh on the EU servers, it was a rogue I started with.

And I played Rogue as my main for the entirety of TBC. However, I did get a level 70 warrior in that time [which I previously mentioned, I believe]. I also started a paladin for fun, to try out the AoEadin spec that had been mentioned in a few places. By the time 3.0.1 hit, I was level 50 on the paladin and enjoying it.

As stated, I tried to play my rogue, but with the changes to the combat spec, it just didn't feel right to me any more [and I hated muti-spec] and started levelling my paladin more. I came to really enjoy tanking immensely. While I never got much opportunity to raid due to work and university taking up so much of my time, I was able to tank 5-mans a lot [although, I was never a huge fan of PuG tanking - as you may gather from many of my rants]

Recently, a friend asked me to level a character on her server. I chose to level a Warrior - I was never comfortable tanking on my original Warrior since I'd not been able to get the hang of the different abilties required for tanking - and I never really liked Fury or Arms. Sure, a spinning cow of death is fun for a while, but it just wasn't me...

My levelling of this warrior was done 50:50 instances and questing - by the time I reached Outland, only DiM West and Stratholme were missing from my achievements - as far as memory serves, anyway]. I'd like to think I became quite a competant tank on him. [If I stay on the server come cata, I may get a name change]

Now, with 4.0.1 having hit, I've tried to tank with Baberth, and it feels... empty. Granted I've not had much chance to play properly, but a quick run into SWP with a pug had me constantly losing aggro as I just couldn't build up the threat fast enough [part of this I believe is due to the changes I said I believe are coming for Cata [in an earlier post], and part because I was a full tier lower than most of the raid].

One thing I've noticed though - mana is definitely not an issue any more, and it looks like becoming mana-starved will be a thing of the past.

Compare this to my Warrior Popeseye [a type of steak cut. My Cow names are typically puns], and nothing feels overly different. In fact, things feel better. I have self-heals coming out of my ... shield! Of course, this is probably just as well, because due to the block "nerf", I'm certainly squishier.

Where-as previously, it was possible for you to completely block attacks; it is now only possible to block 30% of the attack [I have vague memory of this % being increasable through mastery [via critial blocks or something] but could be wrong and can't check as I'm at work]. However this meant that a 5-man quest mob in Icecrown I /almost/ 1-manned prior to 4.0.1 now WTFPWN!'d me very quickly, as instead of stopping most of his damage whenever I blocked [and he hit hard], I was now only marginally reducing it.

What do I feel this means for tanks? First, that even for Warriors, avoidance should now be pushed towards parry and dodge - more so parry if you use the Hold the Line talent. Next - this puts Death Knights and Druids at a head-start for current content since they typically stack parry and dodge respectfully [and don't get block]. How it'll look in the future, I'm not sure.

I'm probably going to persevere a bit on Baberth until Cata hits - see if I get the hang of the new rotation - and decide closer to time which tank I prefer.

Hell, I may even end becoming a bear tank or DK tank... who knows.

Does that make me a FailPlayer?ing of the past.

Compare this to my Warrior Popeseye [a type of steak cut. My Cow names are typically puns], and nothing feels overly different. In fact, things feel better. I have self-heals coming out of my ... shield! Of course, this is probably just as well, because due to the block "nerf", I'm certainly squishier.

Where-as previously, it was possible for you to completely block attacks; it is now only possible to block 30% of the attack [I have vague memory of this % being increasable through mastery [via critial blocks or something] but could be wrong and can't check as I'm at work]. However this meant that a 5-man quest mob in Icecrown I almost 1-manned prior to 4.0.1 now WTFPWN!'d me very quickly, as instead of stopping most of his damage whenever I blocked [and he hit hard], I was now only marginally reducing it.

What do I feel this means for tanks? First, that even for Warriors, avoidance should now be pushed towards parry and dodge - more so parry if you use the Hold the Line talent. Next - this puts Death Knights and Druids at a head-start for current content since they typically stack parry and dodge respectfully [and don't get block]. How it'll look in the future, I'm not sure.

I'm probably going to persevere a bit on Baberth until Cata hits - see if I get the hang of the new rotation - and decide closer to time which tank I prefer.

Hell, I may even end becoming a bear tank or DK tank... who knows.

Does that make me a FailPlayer?

Druid levelling concerns

2010-10-17T16:56:00.000+01:00

I never really paid too much attention to the patch notes for 4.0.1; mainly because it was always in so much flux and by the time I got my head round one change, it became obsolete.
So, it was a bit of a shock when I logged in to my level 17 druid to find that Swipe was gone! Those of you not in the know may wonder why it was a concern.
This was always the druid equivalent of a warrior's Cleave, even back in the Vanilla days. Granted that until patch 3.0.1, it hit 3 targets instead of Cleave's 2, this was pretty much to make up for a lack of Thunderclap
For a Warrior, they received Cleave at level 20 - later than Swipe - but had thunderclap at level 6.
That meant that both Warriors and Druids could be viable tanks by level 16 - there wasn't much point in running instances before that anyway. A paladin's Consecration was a weird outlier.. while it is now a baseline ability, originally it was a Holy talent, a tier 3 talent at that - and if memory serves wasn't in the game until later in to Vanilla's life [I was a horde player, so Paladin abilities didn't concern me much back then]. But of course, tanking wasn't quite in the paladin design model anyway - it was more of an after-thought.

Much of the early tanking designs were vastly different from then by the time we reached where we were last week: Druids, Paladins and Warriors could tank quite effectively once they received their first AoE attack and threat modifier stance/aura [although, the fact that the dungeon finder isn't available until level 15 shows that you're not expected to until then]. This means:

Warriors could tank as soon as they completed the quest for Defensive Stance [level 10]
Druids could tank once they received Swipe [level 16]
Paladins could tank once they received Consecration [level 20]

Sure, a gap of 10 levels between Warriors and Paladins, but that's not that much in the grand scheme of things at those levels.

All that has changed though with 4.0.1 and the loss of Swipe until level 36! A whole 20 levels later. This leaves a fledgling bear tank [level 16-23] with the following abilities that could be used for tanking:

Maul [Heroic Strike equivalent]
Mangle [nice single target damage, which was once not available until level 50 through talents]
Demoralizing Roar
arguably Thorns [which has been nerfed from a 10 minute duration to 20 seconds...]

I say 16-23 above because a druid actually gains no new abilities useful for tanking - that I can see - until Faerie Fire at level 24! Then, at level 25 they can use Glyph of Maul to add a second target to their maul attack [on a 3 second cooldown, with heavy rage cost]

To me, I can only think that to be able to tank more than 1 or 2 targets comfortably, a druid would need to run in with Regrowth and Renew ticking away, cast Demo Roar, and start tab mauling. If a DPS player even thinks of using a multi-target attack until level 36when a bear is tanking, then things may end up very nasty.

I honestly don't know what Blizzard was thinking - and I applaud any Bear that can tank well in those early levels.

Awesome news!

2010-10-16T12:46:00.000+01:00

My originally unpublished rant is now null and void based on a blue post by Zarhym:

I provided an update in the lengthy thread about Master riding, so in case it gets missed I'm throwing it up in its own non-sticky thread for now.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27187849344&sid=1&pageNo=28

I have a slight update to spread to the masses. We are going to be adding a hotfix for the achievement What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. This hotfix will make it so that obtaining the Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake will award players Master riding.

The way in which 310% will be awarded is going to be a little quirky at first, but we plan to make it a more smooth process in a future patch. For now, you will need 280% flying in order to learn to use the Violet Proto-Drake. Once you mount the drake for the first time it will teach Master riding. The only catch is that you have to dismount and mount the drake again in order for 310% speed to take effect.

Phew.

Then, it turns out that Anzu the Raven god now requires no summoning - I can try and get that mount too now. Yup, great news for mount collection and stuff (:

Grumbles and Moans

2010-10-16T12:40:00.000+01:00

Please Note: This was a post I made but decided not to publish it because it was a bit too moany, even for me... However, recent news has made me OK with posting it now.

Bit of a grumble here.
One of the things I'm a bit pissed off about is missing out no free 310% mount speed on my Paladin. Sure, I have it on my original main - my rogue - but not on Baberth.
Why am I pissed off? I'm short 1 section of an achievement, which is part of a meta, which is part of the What a Long Strange Trip it's Been achievement.
The part that I am missing is the Hallowed Helm for the Sinister Calling achievement, This would have gotten me the All Hallow's Eve meta and in turn the full year one. I farmed the horseman daily for the entirety of the holiday last year, and spoke to innkeepers every chance I got. I saw it once - and lost the roll.
My irk is doubled by the fact that the event starts next week! [I'm sure it's next week - can't check at work] Then, I could have farmed the shit out the instance and innkeepers and hopefully gotten it.

But no, it is not to be.
Sure, I'll get my violet protodrake, but I'll need to drop 5000g to get the 310% speed ):

I want to be ignored!

2010-10-15T14:23:00.001+01:00

If my understanding about the changes Cataclysm [and 4.0.1] is bringing is correct, I am going to end up on the ignore list of many players.
And I hope I do.

/!\ Alert: Incoming Wall of Text! /!\

The reason for this being, these players will be ones I don't want to tank with anyway - and rather than have to fill up my ignore-list with them, I'll let them do it to me. This all stems from the instance clearing style that WotLK has manifested with the improved AoE tanking capabilities of all tanks: Round 'em up; Nuke 'em down. Finesse was made to be a thing of the past.

Back in the days of vanilla, I remember [with a smile] being able to say [on my rogue] "I have improved sap..." when people were looking for CC in an instance. However, I was full in the knowledge that I was expected to die alone when that 10% unstealth rate reared its ugly head and vanish failed. Of course, a wipe would occur when the healer forgot and tried to heal me just as I hit vanish. I can also remember the utter glee I felt when they made improved sap baseline and removed the failure rate for TBC. Sure, it could still be resisted, but that wasn't as often.
Still in Vanilla, and before the raid target marks were introduced, alongside your Main Tanks (MT) and Offtanks (OT) there was the concept of the RA - or Raid Assist. These were the people who knew who the mobs to attack and in what order. And damn, you better have their names entered into your /assist macro!
The raid target icons appeared in the tail end of Vanilla and into TBC, but was by no means Blizzard's idea. The first place [in WoW] that they emerged was in CTRA: the mandatory raiding addon. But, in Blizzard's style, they took anything that they found was a good idea, accepted its use and integrated it into the game itself. [In case it's not clear - I approve of this]
By TBC this trend was maintained, but I will admit it was improved upon. Classes without crowd-control were sought after for 5-mans, so the run could be nice and simple [unless of course the tank was a paladin and CC was scoffed at :]. Rogues, hunters, warlocks and mages. Mages being preferred. I remember a couple of my hunter friends being absolute geniuses at chain trapping. Then, when you hit the raids, CC wasn't wanted; it was needed! And the CCer had to be able to tell the rest of the raid when their CC was about to break so the tank(s) could pick up the target.
The majority of tanks could comfortably handle 4 targets before aggro started to become unmanageable [holding more showed a lot of skill on the part of the tank, but generally wasn't fun for them: this is from anecdotal evidence, so could be wrong]
Throughout Vanilla and TBC, I remember the mantra "You pull it; you tank it", but now in LK, that mantra is scoffed at, and even looked down upon. Players expect the tanks to pull bigger and bigger groups - hell, as log as the healer can keep the tank alive, there's little to no difference in the time it takes to kill 1 mob as it does 30. There's no extra strain on the DPS: just on the tank and healer. Which is why you probably see the arrogant players push for it. As a tank, I liked to go at what I felt was a comfortable pace - comfortable in that I was holding aggro securely and that I wasn't dying, and the healer wasn't getting too taxed. If the /healer/ pushed for me to take more, then I would - until aggro became an issue [not often, typically - except where I'll mention]
TBC was where I first tasted tanking - only once, though - and that was on a warrior that wasn't defense capped and trying to do heroic Slave Pens. Damn, I feel dirty mentioning I tried to do a heroic without the def-cap... It was interesting, though. However, I digress

With the "You pull it; you tank it" came the implied responsibility of DPS that they needed to pay attention to what the tank was doing, and who they should be attacking - or, they would die; and the tank would let them. Sometimes the healer too. Now I mentioned that this mantra wasn't liked much more, and this is primarily - I believe - due to the ease of which tanks can /generally/ hold aggro. Therefore, when it does happen, the tank is automatically thought to be to blame. Never mind that the DPS was attacking a target nowhere near the tank [or, my personal favourite, when they're not attacking a target that doesn't hold to regular threat rules and should be killed first], or that the DPS decide they'll attack who they want, rarely all agreeing on the same target, meaning the tank's aggro has to be spread thinner to do their job. Sure the mobs will die in the same time, but the damage being done to the tank will remain more constant rather than decrease incrementally, which leads to more work for the healer.
When this returns - it was getting hinted at reasonably early with the tier 10 5-mans - there is going to be a period of unrest and very horrible dungeon runs. Many LK-Babies will get used to it, and learn to adapt; however there will be massive outcry from the Failplayers, the M&S, who think that the "Round 'em p; Nuke 'em down!" is the only way 5-mans should be done, since it was faster and promoted the in-and-out-quickly for dungeons. I found this attitude quite prevalent even in the lowest instances while levelling my new Warrior: people tried to apply LK HC tactics to vanilla dungeons not designed around that concept; they expected even a level 15 Warrior to have multiple snap aggro techniques.

I will admit, it's not the complete fault of the player-base that this is the way instances have went. Blizzard's design goal of all tanks being able to AoE tank brought it about. The players just pushed it where it didn't need to go, and expected the rest of the game to function the same as the end-game.

I look forward to the return of CC, and the need for care on the part of DPS, and the return of finesse in runs. And if the DPS don't like that I want to play this way; well, they can just add me to their ignore list.

A new patch, a new day...

2010-10-14T12:38:00.001+01:00

Yesterday was so much of a wasted WoW day for me.

Being the smart person that I am, I made sure I had the patch all pre-downloaded and set off the installer and leave it validating before I left for work. 10 Hours later, I return home to find it hasn't even started actually patching yet.
Why not? Windows Bloody 7...

The patch was waiting on me authorising its ability to modify files on my computer.
So, over an hour later, it has finally installed the patch. And I can get to playing the game!

Or so I thought. No, I had to wait even longer because there was *another* patch to be applied on top of this - another 1.6GB.
"Fortunately", I only needed to get about 700MB of it before I could log in to game though - thanks to the new patching system.
Unfortunately, WoW patching uses bittorrent, and my ISP throttles the ever loving shit out of bittorrent traffic during peak hours [a major reason why I pre-downloaded the other part of the patch].
From when I got in from work at 6pm, it was after 10pm before I could finally log in. Over 4 hours lost in glyph sales.
Yes, I too was jumping on the glyph bandwagon. And why not? People will be trying to get all the glyphs they can!

The saddest part for me though, was discovering so many of my favourite addons have not been updated for Cataclysm.

Auctioneer? an unholy mess with no sign of it being updated. [edit: looks like I was a bit hasty in this statement :]
Fubar? Not working at present.
Cowtip? Dead as hell because Dogtags is gone. [Again, I was hasty - things are looking up...]
Pitbull? I was using 3. Gonna have to change to 4 now, and that means recreating my layout
And more and more - I've yet to perform a full post-mortem on my UI. Will do that tonight along side usage of Addon Manager to turn them on and off without needing to log out. Will still be a pain, though

It was quite painful to list my glyph auctions without Auctioneer. Having to manually switch between the screens to check the prices and to type in the size of stack and how many stacks.
Logged in to about 500 gold this morning - not much, I know. Put up a bunch more auctions before leaving for work, though.

I wonder how my balance will look when I get in...

Then, I have the further joy of respeccing all of my many alts. And then relearning how to tank a paladin [Warriors look like there will only be minor differences, fortunately]

Heralding the end of our world

2010-10-05T18:45:00.000+01:00

It's been a couple of days, and I did more instances. One more heroic, and a couple of shots at Coren Direbrew.
I did the holiday event first of all, looking to get one of the delicious stamina trinkets. I got it on my second attempt: Bitter Balebrew Charm. At such early gear levels, 170 extra stamina is definitely not to be passed up.

The thing that gets me about the holiday event, is just how impersonal it is and how little the other people there care...
On my paladin especially, I can't count the number of times I've zoned in to the instance to already see a DPS player starting the event. I've been sorely tempted to just stand back and see if there's a wipe because of it. Unfortunately, my morality kicks in and I've dropped consecration...
No matter, it's all over in about 30 seconds anyway.

So. Coren aside I did my queued up for another HC, and got HoL.
After a few days, I honestly can't remember what the group composition was like beyond there being a hunter who used misdirection a lot [loves it].
I did get nice new shoulders out of it, as well as the Loken and Volkhan achievements

Once I get a few more bits of ilevel 200 gear, I think I'll spam run normal ToC until I get The Black Heart.

Perseverance wins

2010-10-03T13:57:00.000+01:00

Hoping for as good a group as my previous heroic was probably way too much to ask.
I zone in to Azjol Nerub. "Fantastic," says I, "It's a quick instance, and chance of a damn good newbie tank trinket too." How naïve can one person be?

The first sign should have been the complete lack of any response to my initial "Hey" on zone in...
The next should have been them ignoring the taunt immune Anub'ar Skirmisher despite me marking it with a skull. Fortunately, no deaths caused.

Then, I pull the first of the watchers. During the fight, I notice my health start to drop like a stone. I blow cooldowns, but still I die, and we wipe. Nothing said in chat, but I had my suspicions.
Run back in, get health and mana, and I pull the mob again. Exactly the same thing starts to happen, but this time I spot that the shaman healer is Web Wrapped, and the DPS isn't doing a thing about it. Granted, I should have tried to interrupt the cast, but in my own failings, I didn't have the watcher targeted to spot it happening.

As soon as we zone back in, and I'm writing a message to say they should communicate more, the shaman drops group, followed quickly by 2 of the DPS. All that is left is myself and a mage, who I had already selected as my Vigilance target. As the group leader, he tries a requeue and I accept my role - which gets me a /cheer from him. Finally! Some communication.
The new group forms quickly, of which one of the DPS is a rogue... and he likes to use ToT! He used it almost everytime it was off cooldown. Now this was the sign of a player used to doing instances and wanting to either: a) make sure there's more DPS [by increasing mine] or b) knew that as a "low" health tank, I'd probably need assistance in keeping aggro in some runs.
Either way, I was happy.

With a much improved group, we blitzed through the instance and I was rewarded for my perseverance with:

Yes, I got my first purple loot drop! [My second purple, since I have Armor Plated Combat Shotgun]
Things are looking up.

The First Heroic

2010-10-02T20:59:00.001+01:00

After reaching level 80 on my new warrior, Popeseye, I set myself a target of 25k health before I'd start doing the heroics. I achieved this goal after 9 hours played at level 80 - while somehow managing to get 550 defense...

So, I queued up and got Halls of Stone. I'm not 100% sure about the group make up, but I believe it was a priest healer, a DK, a mage and possibly a hunter. The whole group was chatty, so I had a good feeling about the run.
I did my usual group check with Elitist Group and my hearth stopped... the lowest average ilvl among them was 240. Mine was 176... These were people in at least T9 gear, while I wasn't even T7! I cast Vigilance on the mage, and hope my guess is right about him doing the most damage.

It turned out there was zero need for concern. While the group carried me through the instance - I had a hard time keeping any aggro - they basically stated that I had no need to worry if I lost aggro, since they were so overgeared for it. I found it a fun run - if a little manic, as I still tried to maintain aggro as a tank should.
In the end, the run rewarded me with:

Good Grief
Brann Spankin' New
Heroic: Halls of Stone [we did plan to do the Abuse the Ooze, but things were against us]
Refined Ore Gloves

In all, a good run.

Empowered by this run, I decided to queue again...

New blog name

2010-10-01T20:04:00.001+01:00

Once, I was "Baberth, the Failadin"; now, I am "Adventures in Tanking"

Why?
Well, I no longer exclusively tank with Baberth, but instead also play on a second warrior tank that I rolled on a friend's server. This tank is another Tauren, and is called Popeseye.
His name is a reference to a cut of steak that you get in Scotland.

So, when I do blog, it'll be about what happens on any of my tanks.
Hope you enjoy the change.

Inscription: A bad design for a profession

2010-07-24T17:05:00.001+01:00

For a while now, Inscription has bugged me as a profession model.
How I mean by that is, the way in that you gain the new recipes.

Inscription is perhaps the simplest to get to near max level; For the very early points, you just make the needed inks, and then every 5 points you get a small batch of new glyphs or scrolls to make. Although it slows down a touch, this is pretty much the way to level up the profession.

The flaw with this profession lies in the way you get the rest of the glyphs - through completely 100% random chance [split over 3 different systems].
Minor Inscription Research
Northrend Inscription Research
Book of Glyph Mastery
The reason this is flawed is because these researched glyphs are often useful across seemingly random level ranges. For instance, Glyph of Blocking requires Northrend Inscription Research - which itself needs at least level 65 to get - but is useful for Warriors from level 40.

This method for gaining new recipes is the same as Alchemy's discovery mechanic, which was introduced in a simpler form in The Burning Crusade. Which does also mean that it can be a while before someone has all the elixirs, flasks and pots for their level bracket.
However, the major difference being [aside from there being far fewer recipes to discover], in alchemy recipes from the previous tiers of the profession are rarely useful in the upper tier - they're replaced by ones of the same mechanic, but more powerful - so it isn't of much concern when the alchemist doesn't have it. However, the previously mentioned Glyph of Blocking will still most likely be useful [pending game changes] to Warriors in end game, and Scribes have no way to guarantee they will ever get it - especially since there are 83 glyphs found via NIR, and there is no way to tell which you'll get.

Now, looking to the future, and you're on a brand new realm for Cataclysm - no transfers allowed yet. Both the Book and NIR are items gained from being in Northrend, so once players reach level 78-80, they're going to head off to the new Cata-zones. It then means prices will go up for the herbs required, and the books themselves, along side them becoming a lot rarer.
So, these useful glyphs are just not going to be available...

Is this something that is going to be addressed with the glyph overhaul coming, and how will it affect those with and without the researched glyphs?

AH WTF?

2010-07-22T22:49:00.001+01:00

Just had a serious "WTF??" moment upon logging on to my bank alt.

I had a large batch of netherweave bags on the AH, and I logged in to all of them having sold. Nothing new there, except they were bought by the same person.
So, out of curiosity, I decided to see how much profit he had planned to gain from the resale.

That was when I got confused. You see, he bought each of mine for 12g50s... and was selling for

12g49s99c

Yes, he was selling for less than he paid!

Is there some tactic I don't know about that this person is using? Because I he's put himself at even more of a loss due to the AH cut...
Some people confuse me

Cataclysm Beta: Talent tree changes

2010-07-14T15:45:00.004+01:00

[this post was correct at time of publish]
The latest build of the beta has implemented the first version of the 31-point talent trees for all the classes, and my first impression of the talents for prot paladins is rather nonplussed.

As usual, MMO Champion has a working talent tree on the go, but I'm going to describe them here with my thoughts.
This is mainly just on the protection tree talents. I'll lok at other trees, as they relat to protection later.

So, without further ado. My comments are in italics.

Tier 1
Toughness: Increase your armor value from items by 3/6/10%
Pretty much a staple protection talent. The same talent exists in the Warrior talents, so I can assume this will be taken by all tankadins. It's movement to a tier 1 ability means tanks will feel more tank like earlier on.

Seals of the Pure: Increases the damage done by your Seals and their Judgements by 5/10/15%
I find it interesting that this has moved to the protection tree - and is basically a swap with Divinity. I also notice that it's worded for all Seals now. Has Seal of Cleave been removed, or have they decided that it should get a boost?

Improved Hammer of Justice: Decrease the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice spell by 10/20 seconds.
PvP talent. I don't see this in many PvE builds in the current form. However, the new JotJ [below] has removed it's HoJ CD reduction...

Tier 2
Judgements of the Just: Increase the duration of your Seal of Justice effect by 0.5/1.0 sec and your Judgement spells also reduce the melee attack speed of the target by 10/20%
Very similar to the current tier 10 talent, but without the HoJ reduced CD. This puts one of our potential interrupts back up to a minute cooldown.

Sanctuary: Reduces damage taken from all sources by 1% and when you block, parry, or dodge a melee attack you will gain 1% of maximum mana.
Goodbye to Blessing of Sanctuary; Hello to built in mana returns. However, I feel this is too low in the talent tree at present - it should be out of reach of the other specs. It probably will get swapped out, otherwise every single PvP paladin will take it, and there will be much QQing from other classes.

Guardian's Favor: Reduces the cooldown of your Hand of Protection by 60/120 seconds and increases the duration of your Hand of Freedom by 2/4 seconds.
PvP talent. Will be taken by Ret palas

Sacred Oath: Increases the damage you cause while using a one-handed weapon by 4/7/10% and increases the amount absorbed by your Sacred Shield by 10/20/30%
Looks like it's persuading us to use our own sacred shield, or this is a talent that will be picked up by Holy paladins. I'm swinging towards the latter. Still, bread and butter talent for prot, with the shield bonus being good for running solo stuff, or instances without a holydin.

Tier 3
Spritual Attunement: A passive ability that gives the Paladin mana when healed by other friendly targets' spells. The amount of mana gained is equal to 5/10% of the amount healed.
No change to this talent. How much we'll need of it remains to be seen, but definitely at least 1 point.

Divine Sacrifice: Instant cast; 2 min cooldown. 30% of all damage taken by party members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin (up to a maximum of 40% of the Paladin's health times the number of party members). Damage which reduces the Paladin below 20% health will break the effect. Lasts 10 seconds.
Same as the current version. Although, it's usefulness to prot is possibly increased. See Divine Guardian below

Improved Exorcism: Reduces the cast time of your Exorcism spell by 0.75/1.5 seconds and increase the damage by 10/20%
Welcome back instant cast Exorcism! This will be a must, giving us another spell to use in our rotations.

Improved Devotion Aura: Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 17/34/50% and increases the amount healed on any target affected by your auras by 2/4/6%
A must have talent, although this is the one I'd swap with Sanctuary.

Tier 4
Hallowed Ground: Increases the duration of your Consecration spell by 15/30 seconds and the damage it causes by 10/20%
Woah. Not sure what to make of this yet, not until I've seen the description for Consecration at this time... since there's no wording of cooldown being affected, this could mean casting multiple Consecrations at the same time!

Vindication: Gives the Paladin's damaging attacks a chance to reduce physical damage done by the target by 5/10% for 10 seconds
Subtle change to the current version to one that looks like it'll scale with level. Wonder if Demo shout/roar is getting the same sort of change?

Shield of the Templar: Your Avenger's Shield has a 50/100% chance to silence your targets for 3 seconds.
Same end effect as the current, for reduced points. Will be cookie cutter, since we need a silence [and our equivalent to Heroic Throw]

Tier 5
Ardent Defender: instant cast; 2 min cooldown. Activate to reduce damage taken by 20%. While active, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed for 15% of your maximum health. Only useable when your health is below 35%.
No more passiveness to it. Looking at DK's Will of the Necropolis, I can see the similar goal - "You want to live? You gotta ask for it"
However, compared to WotN, the paladin version seems a lot riskier - you could activate it just as a massive heal takes you out of the danger zone, and when you really need it, it's now on cooldown...
I'll need to check to cooldown of Rune Tap...

Divine Guardian: Reduces the cooldown of your Divine Sacrifice and Divine Plea by 30/60 seconds.
This puts Divine Sacrifice into definite must have talents for tanks, I'd say. Also, does that make Divine Plea have no cooldown, or was that increased?

Holy Shield: Instant cast; 8 sec cooldown. Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 2/4/6%, and deals 97.8/195.6/293.41 holy damage for each attack blocked
Very bad wording on this talent. Supposedly, the damage reduction is meant to be passive - according to blue posts - but it's not clear here at all...

Tier 6
Sacred Duty: Increase your total Stamina by 5/10/15%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection spells by 1/2/3 mins.
Could that be putting bubble and bubble wall to 1 minute cooldown? Link that with Divine Guardian and Sacrifice, and that's a massive amount of damage absorption a paladin could take in a party.

Improved Crusader Strike: Reduces the cooldown of Crusader Strike by 2/4 secs and increases the damage caused by 50/100%
Does this put CS as having no cooldown? If so, it looks like this is our single target spam, and HotR below is out multi-target spam

Tier 7
Hammer of the Righteous: Instant cast; no cooldown mentioned. Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 3 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.
Reduced damage compared to the current version, but I assume that's to help push it out of single target rotations in favour of Crusader Strike instead.

Levelling as a Protection Warrior

2010-07-13T20:21:00.008+01:00

This post is not a how-to guide like my Levelling as a Protection Paladin post, but is instead more about a couple of stories I've had while I've been levelling a warrior as protection on another server.

I'm currently at level 45 with the warrior, and have levelled it completely by going through the protection tree with intent to tank instances as I go. I rolled on a server that a friend plays on, where she had a level 30 holy priest available. So, once I hit level 28, I've been going through instances [with the occassional questing] as a tank+healer pair.
Yes, that means pretty much instant queues, even at lower levels :)

The biggest issue I have noticed as I've used the LFG tool at this level is, and I state this as fact:
The majority of DPS players wearing heirloom items are complete and utter dicks.

Yes, I said it. They're dicks.
These are the "gogogogogogogogo!" players.
These are the players that will open up with AoE DPS while you're mid-charge towards the mobs.
These are the players that will pull for you when you have no rage and Bloodrage is on cooldown.
These are the players that will run as far away from you as possible when they get aggro.
These are the players that will happily blame you, the tank, for being shit because any of the above got them killed.

Basically, whenever I've zoned into an instance and seen one of the DPS wearing any form of heirloom item, I sigh. I think I've had 1 case where it didn't cause issues [which was with a rogue in Uldaman]

Here's a couple of quick tales as examples:

Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard
I'd run SM:GY quite a few times by this point, as it was only 1 of 2 instances the group I was in could all go in to: me, my healer friend [MHF], and a level 32 rogue from the same guild. I'd perfected pulls, knew how many I could handle, etc.
As I zone in, I see a shaman in full BoA gear, and a hunter - both in the same guild - and they're already running head-first into the mobs. The first 2 are non-elites, so I wasn't bothered... and then they ran [while the non-elites were still up] into the first room to grab the first boss.
Since they're not even trying to pay attention, the second MHF hits off a heal on to the shaman, almost all of the mobs come running at her. Fortunately I was able to get off a Bloodrage and thunder clap before any serious damage occured.

Once all the NPCs are down, I'm in the middle of typing "Can you please let me tank? I can hold aggro quite well." they're already off to grab the next lot of mobs.
The response said it all to me: "Fuck you. We'll just get you kicked from group."

Naturally, the dumbass neglected to spot that 3 of us shared the same guild tag. We waited until he'd managed to get himself a nice big pull, then we dropped group and sucked up the 30 min debuff.

Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral
This was actually a not bad run until we reached doors to the cathedral proper. Well, apart from the "go go go go" and "hurry up!" from the paladin.
I can generally ignore those moans without too much issue, and it wasn't too hard here because the rest of the group was quite chatty and pleasant [you don't get much of that in level 80 HCs, which is why I think the same thing occurs in the hierloom'd players], making the moans scroll quickly past my window.

So, once we got to the doors, I asked everyone to stay outside so I can do some Line of Sight [LoS] pulls and bring them on to the outside of the doors, to ensure we can "round 'em up and deep 'em down" safely.
I run in... and the retribution paladin [wearing BoA shoulders] follows, dropping a consecration as soon as I drop my first thunder clap [where I wasn't even positioned properly, and didn't have all of my intended targets included].
Naturally, this meant that some of my body pulled targets got hit by the consecration as they ran over it and aggro went to him. Fortunately, I was able to get them off him quite quickly, and he had a sword and board so was able to block some of the attacks.

Did I say 'retribution paladin'?
I did.
Did I say 'sword and board'?
Yes.
Yes, I did...
But I didn't bother saying anything to him about it. Until...

I approached the pack of mobs that stand in front of Mograine - going for another body pull, run around a pillar to break LoS, and drop my thunder clap. Now, this is still very close to the boss, and these buggers are runners, so I'm backing off to give us ample time to down any that run in the boss's direction.
But again, as soon as I'd hit TC, the paladin had dropped cons again. This didn't bother me as I had enough aggro generating to be able to hold them on me, so I kept going back. I brought them to the edge of the cons effect... and the paladin started bitching me out.
"U fucking nab! Uv taken them of conscrate!"

I took at this point - as did a rogue in group - to start pointing out his flaws, and we both - at the same time - pointed out he was running as ret with a sword and board. His response was a simple "Not seen a gd 2hand"
God, I hate when people use abbreviations like that in game...

The golden point of this tale came after we had to zerg rush the boss [because this same paladin pulled Mograine before we'd killed all the packs of mobs - damn, that rogue was able to evasion tank well, since I'd died and was running back] and the loot came up.
Yes, Mograine's Might dropped.
And Mr. "Not seen a gd 2hand" Paladin actually passed on it. He passed on an absolutely astounding 2-handed mace for retribution paladins at that level.

I despair.
But, it's a challenge.

Bandwagon jumping: redux

2010-07-10T00:19:00.002+01:00

So, it appear that Blizzard have decided that displaying the real names of the players in their forums is no longer to happen.

Good.

Granted, I wasn't impressed with their initial decision either but I'd like to think my level of QQ wasn't as high as some people's, and I tried to give a constructive reasoning behind my disagreement.
In regards to constructive reasoning, the best I saw was this one on MetaFilter. I'd say very well argued

Bandwagon jumping: Real ID concerns

2010-07-07T13:26:00.004+01:00

Yes, it's been a while since I last posted. I'm still playing, but don't feel I have had much to comment on in the world of tanking [although, I am enjoying levelling a second warrior tank largely through dungeons - might post about that later]

So, the great hooha at the moment is the fact that Blizzard are going to display the real name of the person making a forum post.
Personally, I think this is a really bad idea on the part of Blizz.

Now, before I get into why, I will state that I can understand a probable reasoning behind this planned move, and one I agree with - John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Anonymity in the internet medium allows people to fear no real reprisals on anything they do or say.
This has contributed the very poor signal:noise ratio that is present in the official WoW forums. There's pretty much more posts about complaints [or at least appear to be] and deconstructive criticism than there are posts that could be deemed 'worthwhile'.
Then there's the way that some people will create alts just so that they can add another layer of anonymity to their post [protecting the identity of their main].
Adding the real name of the player to the post will reduce the amount of trolling that occurs, and cause people to think more about what they post.

However, this is still a bad idea, and this is my list on why I have this opinion:

Harassment: while the change will move trolls off of the forums, it won't prevent them from doing so in-game. And while it's still against ToS, not everybody reports it happening...
The sort of harassment that could occur is quite large, but the main ones that spring to mind for me are sexual, racial, and religious.
Sexual ones are almost guaranteed to occur. I've seen it occur so many times already in game, when a guild-mate has it let slip that she's a she in a pug raid, and suddenly she's getting random whispers, or even just crude comments in the raid chat itself. Soon, all it'd take is a single post on the official forums, and people now know that that character is played by a girl. While most other players won't do anything, there will be that small minority that will, and it'll potentially drive people like her away.
Racial harassment will very likely occur along the same lines of religious: many cultures have names that are obviously belonging [or at least were] to a specific country or creed. So, Jonny Troll discovers that another player he hasn't had fun with has a name that links the person to - for instance -Islam, and suddenly this player gets hit with torrents of abuse along these lines.

Real World Consequences: There are a few different ones here. I'm deliberately going with the most extreme first.
The internet is a marvelous place, especially with Google and its almost omniscient capabilities. A dispute in game could bleed into the real world, and with a quick Google search, the address of one of the parties is found - and subsequently hunted out. There have been cases of people taking games very seriously - mentally disturbed people going way too far - and this could result in possible danger to one party. Now, what if they have a reasonably common name, and the 'disturbed' person finds someone who shares the same name as their grievance who lives close by?
A tamer example of this has already been shown to happen when a blue poster gave his real name, and some unfortunate bystander with the same name is now being harassed with a massive amount of phone calls.

Alternatively, many people prefer to keep their online personas as far away as possible from their real life. A quick example of the top of my head would be famous people.

Hacking/Account theft: Knowing the identity of the owner an account makes it a lot easier to discover information to aid in gaining access to 'private' details. Not everybody is perfect at keeping things away from the internet... just look at how Sarah Palin had her email account hacked [possibly wrong link]

Useful information harder to find: Many gamers have stated they will not be posting guides they've made, theories that they've formed, and such like on the official forums once this change has went live, and will move primarily to the fansites that they frequent.
Now, while there are a massive amount of unofficial sites available: WoWHead, WoWWiki, Tankspot, and Elitist Jerks to name but a very few, out of the millions of players that there are, many will not know of their existence, and will look to the official forums for guidance. And they may receive a silence as their answer, or accidental misinformation, as the person(s) best suited to give the correct response has chosen to stay away.

I could probably go on, but I hope my point is made.

Cataclysm: Update to stats

2010-03-02T11:53:00.004Z

Just a quick post, as I've not had time to look over the full details yet, but this is just a reinforcement of my last post, in that Righteous Fury should not be dispellable.

The quick background to this is that Blizzard have stated [for quite some time now] that Defense is going the way of the dodo. Bye bye. Nice knowing you. There's the door.
Of course, they don't want to get rid of critical hits for the non-tanks, so they needed a way for us to go over that 5.6% crit level. The recent posts by Blizz have said that this will come from the standard tanking stances [as I detailed in the old post], including Righteous Fury.
If that's the case, and they decide to do a world boss, then it'll be far to risky to ever let a paladin tank it.
If that buff gets stolen/dispelled by a passing enemy player [because, they know what will happen], then there's this new chance of being crit and we're automatically taking 6% more damage, and what would normally just be a standard healing session could suddenly turn into an insta-gibbed Pala.
Sure, the Paladin should be on top of the situation and get that buff back on pronto, but this [and possibly these if the other player is able to go about his mischief unmolested] is going to end up being wasted cooldowns, and taking time away from being able to fire off the real Oh, Shi! cooldowns should they be needed. In fact, if the enemy player knows the boss, he'd time the dispell for just the 'right' moment to cause tank-death.

TL;DR: Again, give us undispellable Righteous Fury!

Reliance on buffs

2010-02-19T13:42:00.005Z

One of the things that has, shall we say, annoyed me about the mechanics of Paladin tanking is something I first really met while going through all The Burning Crusade dungeons.
Specifically, it was when I hit Epoch Hunter.

Those that know the boss fight are probably in a similar opinion to this...
It's the age old "Paladin stances" argument.

Paladin tanks are unique in the way that their bonus threat and damage reduction comes from buffs instead of a stance [or related mechanic]. Warriors have their Defensive Stance, Death Knights have Frost Presence, and Druids have Bear Forms. For us, we need to have Improved Righteous Fury on, along side Blessing of Sanctuary and Glyphed Divine Plea.
Furthermore, each of the other 3 tanks' stances also provide their bonus threat [bears do more threat as general I believe based on their abilities in that form]; our's only comes from Righteous Fury.
The problem lies not in that we need all those buffs to be a tank, but in one other issue... Righteous Fury and Blessing of Sancuary can be dispelled. And what happens if you lose either - or both - of these buffs? You quickly either lose aggro, or you run out of mana quickly and lose aggro because you can't do anything.
Sure there's putting the buff back on, but if it's been dispelled once, it's going to get dispelled again, leading to an annoying situation.

Basically, we're the only tank that can be forced out of being a tank by something attacking us.

So, the solution?
I don't think - as many do - that we should have stances. No, I think the solution is much simpler:
Make Righteous Fury undispellable. While I'd also like blessings to be the same, I'lll not push my luck on that one. But having the possibility of having the tank suddenly not be a tank is just silly.
I'm just waiting for the time it causes a wipe...

Warrior thoughts continuation

2010-02-12T19:19:00.004Z

I've solo played my warrior more now as protection, getting the hang of knowing where my abilities are - and adjusting my keybinds to be more accessable - and I think I may be ready to venture into an instance tanking shot again.

My gear is very sub-par and largely unenchanted at the moment, although I have managed to get to 538 defence to make sure I'm uncrittable to any mob 72 or less [with a few known exceptions]

One thing I've noticed so far is how much I'm needing more keys that are easy to access - especially since I'm not a fan of using modifiers. This has come about because a major difference I've found in warrior tanking is how much I need to keep track of debuffs I've put on the mobs [demo shout, thunderclap], and my buff on myself [either commanding or battle shout].
I'm also constantly watching my rage bar and if heroic strke/cleave is needing to be pressed [wonder if I can set up Power Auras to remind me?]

The thing I missed the most however, is what I've been calling pre-emptive aggro.
By this, I mean dropping a consecration when I know mobs are due to spawn and I'll be between them and the healer.
On the warrior I need to time a thunderclap, shockwave or demo shout just right... And I typically miss...

Of course, I shall let you all know how I find my next proper tanking run...

Differences in tanking: Warrior - initial thoughts

2010-02-06T02:02:00.002Z

Currently, I'm levelling a warrior I've had since early TBC. I'd initially started levelling him to 70 not long after I had raised my rogue to 70 and had started raiding with him.
I never really did much with him back then as I was, as said, raiding with my rogue in a guild that had no need what-so-ever of another warrior tank, and I didn't have the time to put into Fillet [my warrior] to make him a RiP, so he got shelved while I mucked around with other classes.

Recently though, I started levelling him again - initially as arms [sucked], then fury [fast dps, no survivability on elites], and then as prot.
Tonight, I just attempted my first dungeon tanking with him [at level 79]

It makes me wonder if paladin tanking is really easy, or if I've just gotten used to it due to the length of time I've played it. With the warrior, I'm constantly watching the actionbar instead of the mobs, so I can see when the abilities are off cooldown, or when I need to reapply Heroic Strike/Cleave.
Then, the 3 other main AoE style threat are on weird cooldowns [to me] and give no forgiveness for using them early.
Thunderclap - closest equivalent to consecration as far as I can tell, but it's a single hit thing. If you hit it too early, and that mob running to the healer hadn't got in range of you yet, you've just wasted a cooldown.
Shockwave - if you face the wrong way, you're screwed and have just wasted another cooldown.
Demo Shout - not sure on how much threat it gives, but I do know it's some... but still not that great to use

I figure that, with time, I'll get a better handle on how to use a warrior's tanking abilities, and I'll continue with a better description on the tanking differences

Caster pulls in Pit of Saron

2010-02-04T00:23:00.000Z

Pit of Saron has - a number of times - caused me headaches, especially in that series of pulls after you've killed Ick&Krick and Garfrost. You know the ones I mean; those caster packs of Ymirjar.

I always found it especially hard since Avenger's Shield wouldn't bounce to any of the other mobs, so only one would be silenced.
I'm very sure - and wouldn't be surprised if it has been confirmed somewhere - that this was deliberate.
As I'm sure you're all aware - the distance is too great to concecrate them all for aggro grabbing. Finding a tactic has been a challenge for me. Just the other day, I finally did it...

This shows a typical layout of the mobs, with the centre being the Ymirjar Deathbringer, the red being the Ymirjar Flamebearers, and the blue being the Ymirjar Wrathbringers.

The tactic I have managed to work out is as follows:
Avenger's Shield on the Deathbringer to silence her, and run to one of the sides. I habitually pick the right... There's a small chance that AS will jump to another mob, but I've yet to see it - if it does, I'd run to the opposite side from it.
Drop consecration - which should now encompass 3 of them [including the Deathbringer]
Run to the opposite side from where I went first, and hit the Flamebearer with Hammer of the Righteous. This often does jump to other targets, as the range seems to be quite large, meaning I get starting threat on all targets.
I pop Arcane Torrent if it's not on cooldown to help round them up further.

During this time, I've also marked the 2 Flamebearers to be brought down first, then for the Deathbringer, leaving the Wrathbringers unmarked, to be killed in whatever order is needed.
The only remaining issue is blight, but I can often deal with this via decursive alerting me to it affecting people.

Using this tactic, I've been able to get it going smoothly, even in low DPS groups

GTF GS; WTF Carbonite

2010-01-29T18:01:00.003Z

After a debate/discussion in guildchat about GearScore, I decided to end its occupation of hard-drive space on my PC.

I'm not a fan of the addon in the slightest: it's misused greatly as the only metric that people should be paying attention to for raids/dungeons instead of an indication of how much is possible
[although supposedly, it was created to show that end-game TBC gear was of equal level to HC level LK gear, for Naxx purposes]

The discussion went into the direction of the amount of messages being sent out by the addon, which some people have reported to cause lag in their raids.
Installation of Addon Spam Fu shows that it does indeed pump out a reasonable amount of messages...
So, I decided to remove it.

However, Addon Spam showed something else that I didn't know about:
Carbonite is a message sending monster! Even when you're not questing, it's pumping out message after message after message. One guild member, in the space of 5 minutes, sent out 200 messages totalling about 16000 bytes [yeah, 16k, but 16000 looks worse :]

Maybe this is another addon that needs to be culled from players that are raiding?

What kind of tank am I?

2010-01-27T15:56:00.004Z

Today, GTFOOTF made a post about paladin tanks, and how we're ones who allow FailPlayers [I really like that term] to be able to be pulled through heroics so easily - or at least more easily than other tanks - because we have the ability to pull up the slack of the others.
However, this makes me wonder what sort of tank I actually am, as I don't feel I can say 2 of his points count for me.

2. When (insert FailDPS) is raiding, I am consistently focused on maintaining threat. If he/she would just stay on my target things would be easier for everyone.

3. When (insert FailHeals) is raiding, I am forced focus on others that might otherwise die. I can’t count the number times I have had to use (insert Pally Awesomeness) to save someone.

For point 2, I just tend not to focus my threat on a single target in HCs - especially with people's prevalence to try and AoE things down now. I want to make sure I have good threat on everything.
[side note, I think I'm going to actually start marking targets, and adjust my unitframes to make sure it shows raid target on their targets [I show player targets]]

Then, point 3. I must admit I'm very crap at using other abilities - especially the Hands. However, I do make sure I use cleanse a lot [thank you Decursive], and have seen myself use that in instances even when there's another paladin healing!
I mean, it's not as if I need much healing, really...

So, how do I actually get myself to improve here - and learn when I should be using my Awesome Pala-bilities - to make my runs better?
Or, should I not use them, and do my best to stop boosting the Fails?

A Challenging PuG

2010-01-24T14:27:00.005Z

After last night's PuG of Fail, I ran another but this time on Baberth. As usual, insta-queues for the tank are awesome and I got into Utgarde Keep in a slow 5 seconds. It was 1:30am on a Saturday, after all...

This one has me on my toes a little bit, you see because this was the first time in a PuG, where I wasn't top DPS! In fact, if you look at the following recount screenshot, you can see that everyone had a respectable DPS for a heroic.

However, if we then look at the damage done in comparison, a new outcome emerges:
The warlock certainly seemed to know how to DPS well, in fact I often started to lose aggro on the initial target that we were fighting, which is what kept me on my toes.
Of course, in retrospect, I realised I should have put him on focus, and tested out my new Hand of Salvation macro... or got them to follow a kill order [I believe their first target was typically who I hit first, who is usually not the one I'm going to always be attacking, as I try and secure aggro on a lot of targets]

A final screenshot, just for curiosity is DPS/GearScore:
Notice the DK has the highest GearScore, yet the lowest DPS [yes, ignore the healer...]?
That is why I hold no value in GS as a useful metric. In fact, ignoring me, since I'm the tank and my DPS is meant to be lower, notice how the DPS seems to decrease as the GS increases on the 3 DPS players?
Of course, locks are just ridiculously overpowered :)

Further recount inspections also showed that the DK spent too long between specials [34% of attacks were white hits], that he didn't GTFOOTF with Dark Smash on Ingvar, and then even more inspection via Elitist Group showed that he was either ungemmed or had poor gem choice in many locations.

Still, at least the Lock made the run a challenge :)

My first PuG of Fail

2010-01-24T01:00:00.004Z

For the first time in all of the [few] random dungeons I have run, I have just had what I can only call a "PuG of fail"
In fact, this was so fail, I didn't even reach the first boss. The dungeon was Drak'Tharon Keep, and I was actually queued as DPS on my levelling warrior.

For those that know DTK, we reached the end of the first corridor. And, by that time, we'd already wiped twice.
And, we didn't last that much longer. Tank bitched at the healer, healer bitched at the tank. Group imploded.

And I wonder why I hate PuGs...

Threat tracking with Aloft

2010-01-18T15:49:00.003Z

One of the things that used to annoy me while tanking - typically with people that were a tier or 2 above me in gear - was trying to keep track of which mobs I had secure threat on. Sure, I could tell easily on the mob I was attacking - I'd just look at omen - but what about the rest?

Someone once recommended TinyPlates: Threat to me, but I just didn't like its lack of personal customisation.
It was then I found out that Aloft - which I was using already - could perform pretty much the same thing within its options.

Now, a quick primer for those who don't know what it is that is being used here for these addons.
Since threat tracking was added to WoW as part of its own functions, there exists the ability to see whether or not you have or don't have aggro, or whether you are about to lose or gain it.
This can be showing in game by text briefly appearing above the mob's head, but when there are a lot of them, by the time you see it you've already lost track of which one(s) you're losing.

This is where Aloft comes in for me.
Based on levels of threat, the nameplate can be given a glow around its border, and the colour of this will change based on which way it's going.
As a tank, I have it set up to have no colour if I'm securely tanking the mob, green if I'm gaining threat, blue if I'm losing it, and red if I have no aggro on it.

Enabling this is quite simple within Aloft. It is done from the options, within the Nameplate Glow sub-menu as shown below.

A few points should be made about the options selected: Invert and Invert only while Tanking.
Inverted reverses the listed colours that are chosen so care needs to be made in selecting your colours... unlike I did at the time of this screenshot below.
The choice above in the style is the common option for how the glow should look.

There you go, give it a shot, see how you like it

Levelling as a Protection Paladin

2010-01-16T19:01:00.000Z

This is taken from a question on Epic Advice. This was my answer

At the earlier levels, there's not really much of a rotation that can be done. However, this does not stop you from being a capable grinding machine.
Here's how [and if you don't have an ability listed yet, don't worry - just do your best]...

Basics

Have Retribution Aura on,
Always use Blessing of Sanctuary,
Have a shield spike of some description,
Have Righteous Fury active and talented
Make sure you activate Holy Shield whenever it is off cooldown,
Typically, you'll have Seal of Light on, but if health seems to be OK, it can be OK to switch to Seal of Righteousness. While Seal of Command *could* be useful, you should not even consider it at this level, as you'd be losing too much from the prot tree to gain it
Use a judgement whenever it is off cooldown - either Light or Wisdom depending on circumstances - with enough mobs, BoS will deal with any mana issues
Consecrate when mana allows it. With enough mobs, this won't be an issue.
Always, always, always try to stay in front of the mobs. Any mob behind you can't be blocked or parried, and that means they can damage you far more easily, while all you can do is apply Consecration

The offense abilities are all on 8-10 second CDs at this point for you:

8 sec: HS
9 sec: Cons
10 sec: judgement

So, don't worry too much about a rotation of even these.

Advanced Tips

Have nameplates active [press 'v' by default], and use the empty time between cooldowns to spot your next judgement target.
As long as health isn't an issue, try to keep as many alive as possible, going for the mob with the highest health.
This is so your judgement has the longest uptime - it's frustrating hitting JoL when you're losing health, only for that mob to die in 1 hit, and you're still being smacked about.
The other reason for keeping them alive is so that you can use the alive mobs as a mana battery: every time you block, dodge or parry attack, you gain mana; if there are less mobs trying to hit you, that's less mana being gained.
If health *is* an issue, take down as few mobs as possible until you're surviving without too much worry
Try to avoid casters, or kill them first:
Spells bypass armor, so it kill us quickly
Spells cannot be blocked, dodged or parried. This means they represent no mana returns to us
Unlike most other classes, mobs that flee are good! As long as we're not dying, that is.
A running mob will bring more mobs to us, which means more mana and more XP
If things start looking like they're going bad, use Judgement of Justice on the mobs so that they won't run away. Just make sure you're using SoL
Finding how many mobs you can take at once isn't too tricky.
Start with a small pack of 3 to 4, and see how your health fairs. If your health is hardly dropping at all, then move towards more mobs, and use Hand of Reckoning to pull in another mob. Keep doing this until your health starts to drop slowly regardless of both JoL and SoL, then kill 1 of them.

Talent tips

While you're levelling, it's not unheard of to use Reckoning in your talent build. As long as you have a judgement on your current target, this will increase the speed you gain its returns
The absolute must have talents are:
Improved Righteous Fury - reduced damage. pretty much a no-brainer, really
Blessing of Sanctuary - reduce damage taken, 10% extra stam and str, and mana back on dodge, block or parry... it's pretty much the staple prot blessing.
Holy Shield - deal damage whenever you block as long as it's active. Coupled with a shield spike, mobs pretty much kill themselves by trying to hit you
Most other talent choices, while levelling, come down to a little personal preference, but they should always aim to either reduce the damage you take and/or increase the damage you do.
As soon as you can, get Redoubt: more block chance = more blocks = mobs killing themselves faster.

Macros that I use

2010-01-15T16:50:00.003Z

While I've been playing, I've started using a small handful of macros, which of course are always increasing.

The first I made was a single slot judgement macro:
#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:shift] Judgement of Wisdom; [modifier:ctrl]Judgement of Justice; Judgement of Light
This means that if I have shift held down, I'll do wisdom, ctrl for justice and nothing for light.

My next was my taunt macro
#showtooltip
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cast [@mouseover,harm]Hand of Reckoning;[@mouseover,help]Righteous Defense;[help]Righteous Defense;Hand of Reckoning
This basically picks the right taunt to use based on who I'm moused-over, or not as the case may be.
It also cancels Divine Shield [bubble], because there is zero point in taunting if I'm bubbled, so I'm making the assumption that with any taunt, I'll need bubble to be gone.
This allows me to bubble during a boss fight, then regain it quickly [if it's tauntable - not wise to do this if it's not] before it explodes something.

I then have a cancel/cast Divine Plea macro
#showtooltip Divine Plea
/cast [nomodifier] Divine Plea
/stopmacro [nomodifier:shift]
/cancelaura Divine Plea;
The reason for this is so I don't need to hunt down Divine Plea in my buff list if I need to do a quick heal on myself someone without a) waiting for it to end or b) being affected by its healing reduction.

More to come once I find/create them

Netherweave cloth

2010-01-13T14:27:00.005Z

I realise I forgot to complete the post regarding grinding TBC heroics and netherweave cloth.

Cloth sales are a largely fluctuating market, and on my server a stack of netherweave cloth can sell anywhere from about 3g to 15g - some day, I may start to track these prices for a few weeks to see if there is any correlation.
Then, there are netherweave bags. I see the prices for these typically ranging from 12g to 18g [although, last week I did see them up at 30g...]

Due to the fluctuations, I decided that cloth is just now worth the risk of trying to sell can be too high:
The deposit is almost half a gold, which means a reasonable amount of waste should the stacks go unsold because of people undercutting.
If undercut, it is just not financially sensible to relist - especially considering bags [coming up]

Now bags. I have never had a bag not sell. Not once. Not ever.
I also have pretty much a set price for bags, which is a lot higher than the average price of cloth, that gets me a net price of around 10g15s per bag [after AH tax]
It should also be noted that the deposit of a single bag is 30s, compared to a stack of cloth's 48s.
If I then have the enable price matching option enabled in Auctioneer, this will allow my price to go a bit higher if there's no-one even close to me, and lower if there's someone getting close to my price.

Therefore, a possible 5-6g vs a guaranteed 10g? It's a no-brainer, really

This isn't uncommon when I post bags:
The "auction created" being from me posting 20 bags

Finally, I will regularly check the AH for netherweave cloth prices, and any stack that falls below 5g is snapped up and converted to a bag for 100+% profit

Any goblin[esque] person care to give their opinion on this too?

5-man abilities I hate

2010-01-13T13:54:00.003Z

This post on WoW.com... 100% this post:
Abilties I usually wish didn't exist in 5-mans

Power Auras Classic

2010-01-11T21:52:00.006Z

I recently started using Power Auras Classic

A quick description of the addon is that it gives you a customisable visual indication of what's happening with (de)buffs of your choosing.

For protection, I have the following things tracked, which can be seen above:
Most ideas were taken from Honor's Code
Righteous Fury not active [a yellow exclamation right in front of my character]
Divine Plea not active [a sort of purple circular design around my character]
Sacred Shield [blue arcs around me if cast by me, and green if someone else]
Bubble Wall available [the yellow arcs. This turns red with a timer when I hit it]

This gives quick visual information to me that I'm ready to tank safely... See, it's fun to pull a mob and discover RF isn't up, just as the non-fail warrior unloads on the same target

And, one thing I didn't notice until today - they've added a per spec button. Its absence was something that annoyed me - I didn't need to know about Righteous Fury being off if I was in Ret spec, for instance

How did I not know this?

2010-01-11T17:44:00.004Z

Something I discovered recently made me quite happy for my TBC reputation achievement grinds. I actually have no idea how I did not know about this, given the length of time I've played this game.
Of course, it could be recent. I won't know unless someone tells me.

What it is, is that the mobs of a heroic dungeon will continue to respawn even after all of the bosses are dead. Normally it takes about 30 minutes from when I leave the dungeon and come back for this to happen.

So, what does this mean for me?
Well, I can handle the elite mobs of most TBC heroics without even breaking a sweat - a pure caster pack or lots that stun cause issues - and the rest just take a little bit of care. Then, those that I can handle, I can typically take on more than 1 pack of them at the same time, and I can kill them in only a little longer a period of time than the normal versions. So, why should I waste time on the lower level versions when I can to the heroic?

The higher level mobs give even more benefits:

more gold drops per kill
higher level of green drops - and often a higher percentage of drops, which means more arcane dust and essences
more - or it at least feels like it - cloth drops
Probably about the same amount of vendor trash drops

Bosses aren't actually worth the effort beyond reputation, since - unless you're an enchanter - their drops are only worth a few gold, and they don't give much in the way of gold or vendor trash.

These all amount to a lot of gold for me. From vendor trash and gold loot alone, I typically earn about 120g per hour. Then, once I add in the AH sales from the DE'd and the cloth sales [more on that later], this can go up to around 500g per hour.
Sure, it's not goblin levels, but it gets me a respectable amount of gold.

So, for a few hours work over a few days, I got exalted with Thrallmar and Consortium - and almost Lower City exalted by bouncing around some instances, and got 6000g in the process.

A Brief History of Me

2010-01-10T23:27:00.003Z

I started playing WoW when Star Wars Galaxies received the 'CURB', which destroyed my characters abilities [I was a weaponsmith and armorsmith] to the point that I just felt cheated.
My first character that I raised to end-game was a Tauren druid called "Fillet". I did a few raids healing with him, but nothing major. Primarily because I was playing on the US realms while living in the UK [on Mal'Ganis, home of Elitist Jerks]
My alt at the time was an Undead rogue going by the name of Turturro - named after the actor John Turturro for his "sneaky sneaky, sir" in the film Mr. Deeds

My next main character was after I'd moved on to the EU realms just after TBC was released. Because I'd enjoyed the playstyle of a rogue so much, I decided that that was what my main would be. And, because I was what could be classed as a veteran back then, I rolled a Blood-Elf, just so I could see the new content.
This was my main character throughout the lifespan of TBC, and I got to raid everything [although not all bosses] with him.
It was during this time that I rolled a paladin - again because this was new for me, since I was always a horde player [and paladins were always auto attack boredom :]

Everything about Baberth was an experiment, and just for mucking around. For instance, until level 15 I used a starter sword enchanted with Fiery Weapon just to see how quicker it made kills. It also got rid of some of the early level boredom of paladins.
It was when I found out about paladin AoE grinding that everything changed.

Playing a Paladin was something I just found so boring - it took me around 6 months to get to level 20, because I'd play for 30 minutes, get bored and stop. This was of course during the time when seals lasted 2 minutes, and judging used up the seal at the same time. But with the discovery that I could be killing loads of mobs at the same time, I was intrigued!
After reading up the how-to guides, as soon as I reached level 30 [lower than the recommended 35, where you get Holy Shield], I respec'd into Protection, and started my first tentative steps into a whole new world.

By the time patch 3.0.2 dropped, I was level 44 [judging by an old screenshot] and now had to deal with a modified way of play. Blessing of Sanctuary used to be a different kind of damage reduction, along with a damage to the attacker.
I was worried with its change, that things would get harder. Boy, was I wrong.
By the time I left the Plaguelands, I was taking on 15 mobs at exactly the same time and not even breaking a sweat.

When I finally hit level 80, I was having way more fun with the character than I was with my then main.
And, after a few beggings and grovellings, my guild let me switch to the paladin.

Unfortunately, I still haven't really raided this expansion - due to work and university commitments - but I do get to do instances. And it is those that I discovered:
I suck*...

*When I say I suck, I mean that I'm just not as situationally aware as the tanks in my guild, and sometimes I accidentally let people die.
But, I'd like to think that, because I'm acknowledging this fact, I am not a FailPlayer, and can be redeemed.

Time shall tell

Hi, I'm Baberth

2010-01-10T05:40:00.003Z

Hello, my name is Baberth, and I'm a level 80 protection paladin on the Europe realm of Auchindoun.
I have a confession to make: I'm not very good...

No, seriously, I'm not that good. But I am trying to improve, and that's what this blog is about. Well, parts of it.
What I plan for in this blog are

How I play - and where I can see improvements or where I'd like suggestions on how to improve at various aspects. Therefore, constructive critisism is accepted, but not asshole-ism.
Fun things I do and find in game. I've been playing almost constantly since around May 06, and this is my 3rd main class
My UI, and how I get specific settings. Or at least the functional parts that help me be a tank.