It has been more than seven days since Pandaria opened up her shores and we landed our ships and wars on those sylvan lands.
My journey began at 2am when I awoke, showered, fed, and sat down with coffee and waited for the quests to begin. The landing was rough, even as we gunned down the drowning Horde, Innana pulled the trigger and swallowed the doubt welling up. This was war. This was necessary. When the horrors popped up, when the warning came, it was brushed aside - it was not understood, and she turned her back to the blood and fire.
Initially, my intention was to group with others and burn through as fast as possible, but very rapidly I realized just how lovely and immersive Pandaria was, and I wanted to get lost in it.
--
I wanted to be a stranger in a strange land, a warrior stranded on lost shores with no recourse but to explore - and in exploring, find a journey that removes the war from her thoughts. Innana wandered the Jade Forest, stopping often simply to gawk and breathe in the green and blue place, sink into the music, and I didn't even notice the sun coming up. Jade Forest devoured my attention - the storytelling and questing is light, repetitive, yet effective. There was a sense of space and time, these people were friendly, open and curious; they allowed me into their lives and I enjoyed the measure of anonymity Innana had.
When the conflict came, I didn't see it on the horizon. I was too taken by the beauty and the brutality of the ending surprised me, I was moved a bit to see the ruins that our war had brought. Yet - as I am wont to do - I didn't blame my side, and so the war goes on.
Perhaps in a fit of denial, a desire to not stare into the mirror, Innana dove into the Valley of Four Winds, lost among those pastoral fields, in the hedges and pools, the plowed fields and gardens, rooting our vermin, shepherding animals, lost in the haze of honest, sweaty work and walking with a companion across the field, arriving at Half Hill, at the Brewery, it would be so easy to forget, to let go of her past and simply become another farmer, here in a land secluded from horror.
But if one goes far enough, one encounters new horrors. The Mantid were breaking through the walls. Soon, it was time for the sword and shield, up the Veiled Stair hiding its mysteries, into Kun-Lai to see mountains like she had never seen before, into local skirmishes and bigger wars, even as the people called her to humble, escort service, old business caught up. After a glimpse of the bloodless Valley, it was so tempting to just turn her blind eye, to escape into the land and be forgotten, but that was not her nature.
Through the war in the Steppes, across the wall, and by the time she landed in the Dread Waste, the memory of the Valley was a small and dim, green mirage. War was all that remained.
--
I had the week off and played pretty much continuously from launch until I hit 90 with only a couple of short naps along the way and then jumping into the heroics right away. Tomorrow on, I'll probably start talking more about tanking, but the initial reaction is extremely positive. Paladin Tanking is fun, really engaging, the rotation is complex enough to keep me from auto-piloting, and we have a ton of tools.
The dungeons are dungeons. Nothing particularly special about them. I think I'm over being excited about dungeons at this point - they really just are means to an end after the first couple of times through. I mean, yes, Shado-Pan Monastery was really awesome my first time through, crazy good with how the dungeon incorporates movie-tropes into a dramatic experience, but the fifth time through I just wanted to get through the mobs. Even the difficulty level was firmly placed at mild, and once I replaced the greens with at least blue 440s, it was just a blur of rushing through in 20 minute long bursts to gear as fast as possible.
Every day of last week was consumed with dailies, profession grinding, and dungeon running. It is fantastic to be in a guild where there were 3 server-first 90s, and we got the server-first guild achievement for maxing out all professions. I've been trying to grind as many heroics by tanking as I can, but there are always more to run. I'm glad I took the week off, it felt productive to get that many runs done, but others did way more.
Everyone was constantly helping each other, cutting gems, disenchanting greens, crafting stuff, chasing down elites in packs, grouping up for dailies. Last night, a guildy got the random-drop BoE shield in Scholo and generously allowed me to use it for the raid tonight. Just, fantastic group of people.
This expansion launch has been the best one so far, in many ways:
- Smooth launch, no hitches, no problems whatsoever at least on my server
- The content is just downright great, I'm all over the lore and immersion of the Pandaria thing, despite my initial skepticism
- Content. I'm constantly conflicted about what to do next. Dailies? Dungeons? Rare spawns? Exploring? Achievements? Scenarios?
- I love my farm. I really thought it was something not for me, but the minute I started work on it, I just loved it.
- And I haven't even touched the new battlegrounds, the pet battles, and neither the Loremasters nor the Dragon reputations yet.
Already Mists shows just how bad Cataclysm was by comparison. The only zone in Cataclysm that left any impact on me was Vashj'ir but otherwise, it was all just bland questing. Even Uldum was spoiled by the terrible storytelling. If the raiding holds up, we could be looking at something of a Wrath caliber if not something even better.
--
In raiding news, my guild killed Galleon on Friday night, and the Sha of Anger last night despite his random despawns, but I didn't get any gear out of it. Galleon is very, very simple but the Sha requires a bit of doing, though even he is pretty easy to overpower with numbers. It's weird to be in a guild actively chasing server firsts like this, but weird in a really great way.
Tonight, we begin Mogu'shan Vaults. I've got some food, I've got my gear enchanted and gemmed, I'll try to sneak in a run of Brewery one more to try to get my hands on a weapon, but otherwise, I think I'm about as set as I'm going to get. I'm double-stacking Stamina trinkets and gemming and enchanting as much Stamina as I can. I think, raid-buffed, I should probably be about ~500k or so. Which is crazy.
Wish us luck!
Showing posts with label dungeons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dungeons. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Gear Gating In Mists of Pandaria
I'm worried about the gear progression path in Pandaria.
In Tier 11 and Tier 7, and presumably in Tier 4, the gear progression for PvE went something like this:
But in Tier 14, we have a new step in the ladder in the LFR and a change in the order, so that the gear progression, I think, turn out to look like this:
I poked around in WoWHead to make a quick spreadsheet, so just take a look at the iLevel of gear and where it comes from:
The iLevel difference between Heroic Dungeon loot and Normal Raid loot is a whopping 30 points.That means that not only will it be useless for raiding, we absolutely have to gear up with Reputation gear. There isn't much crafted gear that I saw, so that might be an option as well, but the point being that there is reputation gear for almost every slot. Here, for example, is a table showing you the gear I would want purely from reputation alone, before stepping into a raid (click to zoom).
Almost every slot is covered except for the chest piece (I suspect these will be crafted).
Blizzard has said they want us to buy gear from Reputation vendors using Valor points instead of Gold as we have done so far. That means, despite all the juggling and changing how we get gear and stuff, we're essentially going to be buying Valor gear from a different vendor that also requires a Reputation.
Not only will we need to grind rep with these guys, we'll also need to farm the Valor which will have a hard weekly cap.
This is essentially a double gear-gate. Ugh.
One note of comfort is that all the gear only requires (at least right now) a Revered level of reputation instead of Exalted as I was expecting which softens the reputation grind, but that does nothing about the Valor cap.
Unless we run LFR. And that's where my problem lies.
In the absence of any useable gear from Heroic dungeons, it will take me weeks to buy even a few items of gear from the reputation vendor. I might even be okay with that, as a means of slowing down content consumption. But.
Someone might get lucky in LFR and be ready to go in half the time. I'm not bemoaning the luck factor here, RNG is RNG, but it's pretty obvious that gearing through LFR is going to be significantly faster than gearing up through the natural gear progression path alone.
With no viable gear from Heroics, we're left only with LFR as a source of dropped gear pre-raid.
In the current tier, as seen above, we won't have that, and if we go into the raids without grinding out the valor/reputation gear for weeks or without running LFR, the first few weeks without LFR tier are going to be brutally difficult.
Considering the fact that Reputation gear is only half a tier behind the Normal gear loot, I would imagine that normal modes are tuned to LFR gear.
That leaves me in a hard spot because I want to see the bosses for the first time in their full glory, not their neutered versions. Of course, the answer is to wait and get gear the way I want, through Valor and Reputation but it feels like a round-about and boring way to gear up compared to what we had before.
I will be disenchanting every single item that drops off of Heroic bosses, killing them solely in the pursuit of Valor points and reputation. That sucks.
Gear from Heroics was always good in the beginning of the first tier. Getting gear from bosses felt natural and organic. I remember in Wrath running Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle praying for the epic tanking sword to drop the night before we were to start raiding and how elated I was when it did.
Now, I'll have a spreadsheet that tells me exactly when I'll get what based on the rate of Valor coming into my pockets.
I know what I enjoyed more. Bah-humbug.
In Tier 11 and Tier 7, and presumably in Tier 4, the gear progression for PvE went something like this:
Quest Greens > Rep, Dungeon, Crafted Blues > Heroic and Badge > Raid
But in Tier 14, we have a new step in the ladder in the LFR and a change in the order, so that the gear progression, I think, turn out to look like this:
Quest Greens > Dungeon Blues > Rep, Valor, Crafting > LFR > Raid
I poked around in WoWHead to make a quick spreadsheet, so just take a look at the iLevel of gear and where it comes from:
| iLevel | Source |
| 463 | Heroic Dungeons |
| 470 | Headless Horseman |
| 483 | Raid Finder |
| 489 | Reputation (and, presumably, Crafted) Gear |
| 496 | Normal Raid |
| 509 | Heroic Raid |
The iLevel difference between Heroic Dungeon loot and Normal Raid loot is a whopping 30 points.That means that not only will it be useless for raiding, we absolutely have to gear up with Reputation gear. There isn't much crafted gear that I saw, so that might be an option as well, but the point being that there is reputation gear for almost every slot. Here, for example, is a table showing you the gear I would want purely from reputation alone, before stepping into a raid (click to zoom).
Almost every slot is covered except for the chest piece (I suspect these will be crafted).
Blizzard has said they want us to buy gear from Reputation vendors using Valor points instead of Gold as we have done so far. That means, despite all the juggling and changing how we get gear and stuff, we're essentially going to be buying Valor gear from a different vendor that also requires a Reputation.
Not only will we need to grind rep with these guys, we'll also need to farm the Valor which will have a hard weekly cap.
This is essentially a double gear-gate. Ugh.
One note of comfort is that all the gear only requires (at least right now) a Revered level of reputation instead of Exalted as I was expecting which softens the reputation grind, but that does nothing about the Valor cap.
Unless we run LFR. And that's where my problem lies.
In the absence of any useable gear from Heroic dungeons, it will take me weeks to buy even a few items of gear from the reputation vendor. I might even be okay with that, as a means of slowing down content consumption. But.
Someone might get lucky in LFR and be ready to go in half the time. I'm not bemoaning the luck factor here, RNG is RNG, but it's pretty obvious that gearing through LFR is going to be significantly faster than gearing up through the natural gear progression path alone.
With no viable gear from Heroics, we're left only with LFR as a source of dropped gear pre-raid.
Let' s leave aside the fact that hard-core progression guilds will run LFR for their tier. There's no question there, that's absolutely going to happen, as it did in Tier 13. For these guys, the kills are about speed, but for me the experience is important, not the speed.When LFR launched with Tier 13, it didn't bother me much. I had a mix of normal and heroic Firelands gear and the iLevel 384 gear didn't appeal to me all that much. Besides, I wanted to see and down the bosses on normal mode before I took up the neutered version of the bosses, and that's exactly what I did. We got Madness down I think in the third or fourth week and that was the first time I went in to do LFR, mostly to get the 4-piece Tier bonus. That worked because we were coming into Dragon Soul after having accumulated the gear from Firelands and as a raiding guild, were geared enough to go straight into normal Dragon Soul without a problem.
In the current tier, as seen above, we won't have that, and if we go into the raids without grinding out the valor/reputation gear for weeks or without running LFR, the first few weeks without LFR tier are going to be brutally difficult.
Considering the fact that Reputation gear is only half a tier behind the Normal gear loot, I would imagine that normal modes are tuned to LFR gear.
That leaves me in a hard spot because I want to see the bosses for the first time in their full glory, not their neutered versions. Of course, the answer is to wait and get gear the way I want, through Valor and Reputation but it feels like a round-about and boring way to gear up compared to what we had before.
I will be disenchanting every single item that drops off of Heroic bosses, killing them solely in the pursuit of Valor points and reputation. That sucks.
Gear from Heroics was always good in the beginning of the first tier. Getting gear from bosses felt natural and organic. I remember in Wrath running Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle praying for the epic tanking sword to drop the night before we were to start raiding and how elated I was when it did.
Now, I'll have a spreadsheet that tells me exactly when I'll get what based on the rate of Valor coming into my pockets.
I know what I enjoyed more. Bah-humbug.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Threat Buffs Hot Patch
Seems like Ghostcrawler has been thinking about the same things I have been grumbling about for some time on this blog. There are two major components to the coming changes, and this is a huge topic as the initial post makes clear.
1. How does removing Threat as a factor affect fights?
2. How do you make Threat stats attractive to tanks?
And beneath all this is the question I keep asking - it might be efficient, but is it fun?
Spoiler Alert: I glyphed out of Glyph of Truth for the first time since it was introduced.
I spent three hours in Firelands last night, with the buffs, so I can talk about what tanking felt like. I was tanking with Death Knight with slightly less gear than me, but definitely Firelands capable, and we had a hunter for the occasional misdirect.
First, let's talk about building Threat.
There is a significant boost to threat generating abilities. Ghostcrawler says:
The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done
Straight up buff to threat-gen, fine, this is just a multiplier to existing threat, and by itself it provides an across the board quality of life increase. It makes snap agro easier, and threat a non-issue on single-target fights.
Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds.
This is the game changer. What this is saying, is that one third of the sum total of damage taken in the most recent 2 second period is used to determine a minimum threshold for Vengeance - which means, two second in a fight, I should have a significant amount of threat already. Two seconds is the period of time it takes melee to get into boss range, or for casters to finish their first cast, or for DoTs to start racking up. It also means lucky streaks will not let you loose all your Vengeance stacks though they might decay still a bit.
In that time, you're also actually hitting the boss at least once or twice and building threat at a rate of five-times the output instead of three-times. Then you take a hit, maybe two, and suddenly your Vengeance bar is glowing and that red bar on Omen is as long as a tree's shadow at sunset (Wut?). On top of this are the documented changes for Vengeance to pass on absorbed damage from bubbles and now you don't have to grumble about Discipline priests in your raid.
When you're AoE pulling trash in heroics, this is going to make threat a complete non-issue. As long as you take the first hits from mobs, and land some kind of AoE on the adds, you should be fine.
This significantly improves a few things:
Could this change have been replaced by giving classes without threat dumps some way to drop it so that players are responsible for maintaining their own agro? Maybe. But I also know tanks who don't go into LFG because their agro issues are such that they can't hold agro on raid-geared DPS going all out one second into the pull and being blamed for not holding agro and getting kicked. This change, while at the top end or even the casually raiding end might seem like overkill, for the vast majority of LFG tanks, this will be a boon.
Overall, I'm a fan of this change so far - I've been super frustrated with my own ability to hold agro at times, as we're actively dropping threat stats for mitigation and DPS just ramps up higher and higher. It's not uncommon to see DPS hitting 20k+ numbers consistently now, and threat was sometimes getting wonky.
All that said - how was actually raiding with the buff last night?
Freaking awesome. The things I was able to worry about instead of agro: pulling efficiently, chain pulling trash because I didn't worry about adds scattering, being able to have DPS immediately go all out on fights without any consideration for threat right from the start (Baelroc, where the enrage meter is actually an issue), and we were finishing each fight at least 30 seconds faster than before.
The instance also just felt like it was more fun. Other than taunting stray adds, my tanking focused on speed and efficiency, not a harried tab-spam of madness to keep threat on everything. Back in ICC days, I used to keep a threat set where I was hit-capped and well past the expertise soft cap. I enjoyed my ability to put out threat that was competitive with the DPS and they didn't feel throttled.
Now, everyone can enjoy that - and it wasn't skill that made me do this, it was gearing, and a relatively obscure way of gearing to new tanks who don't pore over this stuff like I do. I don't think that's a bad thing. It will encourage new tanks to stick with tanking, as tanking is just plain more fun when threat isn't an issue.
I fully understand, appreciate, and empathize with tanks who feel this isn't good, and that the game is being simplified ("GG Blizz catering to casuals"). I'm not one of those tanks.
Tomorrow I'll talk about the other half of this conversation - now that threat isn't an issue, why do tanks want Hit and Expertise?
1. How does removing Threat as a factor affect fights?
2. How do you make Threat stats attractive to tanks?
And beneath all this is the question I keep asking - it might be efficient, but is it fun?
Spoiler Alert: I glyphed out of Glyph of Truth for the first time since it was introduced.
I spent three hours in Firelands last night, with the buffs, so I can talk about what tanking felt like. I was tanking with Death Knight with slightly less gear than me, but definitely Firelands capable, and we had a hunter for the occasional misdirect.
First, let's talk about building Threat.
There is a significant boost to threat generating abilities. Ghostcrawler says:
The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done
Straight up buff to threat-gen, fine, this is just a multiplier to existing threat, and by itself it provides an across the board quality of life increase. It makes snap agro easier, and threat a non-issue on single-target fights.
Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds.
This is the game changer. What this is saying, is that one third of the sum total of damage taken in the most recent 2 second period is used to determine a minimum threshold for Vengeance - which means, two second in a fight, I should have a significant amount of threat already. Two seconds is the period of time it takes melee to get into boss range, or for casters to finish their first cast, or for DoTs to start racking up. It also means lucky streaks will not let you loose all your Vengeance stacks though they might decay still a bit.
In that time, you're also actually hitting the boss at least once or twice and building threat at a rate of five-times the output instead of three-times. Then you take a hit, maybe two, and suddenly your Vengeance bar is glowing and that red bar on Omen is as long as a tree's shadow at sunset (Wut?). On top of this are the documented changes for Vengeance to pass on absorbed damage from bubbles and now you don't have to grumble about Discipline priests in your raid.
When you're AoE pulling trash in heroics, this is going to make threat a complete non-issue. As long as you take the first hits from mobs, and land some kind of AoE on the adds, you should be fine.
This significantly improves a few things:
- The ability to snap-agro adds mid-fight where DPS needs to put out heavy AoE with a single Hammer of the Righteous or Avenger's Shield
- Initial agro on a boss - Paladins should be able to use the Divine Plea > Inquisition > Wings > Exorcism > Judgment > Avenger's Shield &> Crusader Strike opening for a huge lead now that all those abilities will generate much more threat
- Enrage meters become less scary now that DPS don't have to wait for threat to establish, they can start nuking 3 to 5 seconds into the fight and the healers don't have to keep a twitchy finger on the Fury Warrior's raid frame
- Lets classes without agro drop feel less throttled - when I'm on my Death Knights I'm always very careful about initial agro and don't get to ramp up till late in the fight, whereas on my Warlock and Paladin, I can immediately go all out as I have a Hand of Salvation or a Soul Shatter if the screen is glowing red
Could this change have been replaced by giving classes without threat dumps some way to drop it so that players are responsible for maintaining their own agro? Maybe. But I also know tanks who don't go into LFG because their agro issues are such that they can't hold agro on raid-geared DPS going all out one second into the pull and being blamed for not holding agro and getting kicked. This change, while at the top end or even the casually raiding end might seem like overkill, for the vast majority of LFG tanks, this will be a boon.
Overall, I'm a fan of this change so far - I've been super frustrated with my own ability to hold agro at times, as we're actively dropping threat stats for mitigation and DPS just ramps up higher and higher. It's not uncommon to see DPS hitting 20k+ numbers consistently now, and threat was sometimes getting wonky.
All that said - how was actually raiding with the buff last night?
Freaking awesome. The things I was able to worry about instead of agro: pulling efficiently, chain pulling trash because I didn't worry about adds scattering, being able to have DPS immediately go all out on fights without any consideration for threat right from the start (Baelroc, where the enrage meter is actually an issue), and we were finishing each fight at least 30 seconds faster than before.
The instance also just felt like it was more fun. Other than taunting stray adds, my tanking focused on speed and efficiency, not a harried tab-spam of madness to keep threat on everything. Back in ICC days, I used to keep a threat set where I was hit-capped and well past the expertise soft cap. I enjoyed my ability to put out threat that was competitive with the DPS and they didn't feel throttled.
Now, everyone can enjoy that - and it wasn't skill that made me do this, it was gearing, and a relatively obscure way of gearing to new tanks who don't pore over this stuff like I do. I don't think that's a bad thing. It will encourage new tanks to stick with tanking, as tanking is just plain more fun when threat isn't an issue.
I fully understand, appreciate, and empathize with tanks who feel this isn't good, and that the game is being simplified ("GG Blizz catering to casuals"). I'm not one of those tanks.
Tomorrow I'll talk about the other half of this conversation - now that threat isn't an issue, why do tanks want Hit and Expertise?
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
More About Paladin Threat
After my last post, it was nice to hear from a couple of folks that they were also having trouble with threat, so I'm not just being a baddie (for once).
So. I'm mostly interested in solutions, not just complaining. How do we get around this? Let's take about threat from the top.
Hit and Expertise are the two threat stats we're concerned with.
Hit is fairly obvious, it lets you hit things more accurately. The way it works out, you can refer to the following table to see how much hit you need at any given moment. Keep in mind, there is no mob in the game more than 3 levels above yours when you're at cap, so right now, raid bosses are level 88. As an aside, this means for your PvP set, you only need 5% hit.
Expertise pushes your target's Dodge and Parry off the combat table. Melee DPS only need to push Dodge off the table as mobs can't parry attacks from behind, but tanks will need to worry about Parry. Expertise used to be really good for mitigation, as some bosses would gain a haste-buff any time they parried an attack, which gave tanks an incentive to stack Expertise, but that mechanic was taken out of the game and is no longer a factor. Expertise is purely for threat now.
The amount of expertise you need is the same for any mobs of a level higher than yours, but basically, 26 Expertise is the magical number you're looking for to kick Dodge off the table. Chasing the Parry cap is a loosing game and not worth the effort.
Okay, so why did you put that Hit chart up there?
Because you need to consider your environment, and what kind of threat output you need for that environment. The only mobs that need 8% hit are raid bosses. No other mobs in the game need 8% hit. Even heroic dungeon bosses are only level 87.
Why is this important? Get to the point, man!
Sorry, I tend to ramble. Unless you're tanking a farm raid-night to get through all of Tier 11 in 2.5 hours, you (generally) never need to worry about threat on a raid boss. Even if you don't have a hunter or rogue to give you Misdirects or Tricks, you should be able to have the raid sit on their hands for 5 to 10 seconds and with Wings, Inquisition and a small bit of luck, build up a solid lead before DPS goes nuts.
However, when you're clearing trash, when you're in a heroic dungeon, once you get some raid gear, build that threat set and use it.
So let's get set up for tanking dungeons and trash like threat kings.
A Hit cap of 6% means you need 720.65 hit rating. That isn't too much and honestly with items like Soul Blade, Elementium Earthguard, Retribution Tier pants, or even the Valor Hit trinket you can easily get there without giving up a lot of mitigation.
Paladins have it easy with Expertise. Glyph of Seal of Truth gives us an amazing 10 Expertise rating right off the bat. That's almost half the expertise you need total, from one glyph. You should always have this on. The rest you can get with some items here and there, or if you're feeling gutsy, with a Heart of Ragefrom Chimaeron.
The nice thing about those trinkets, is that they have a random on-equip strength boost which is also a very nice thing to have kick in now and again to give your threat and damage output a nice kick in the pants.
One more thing - Glyphs and Talents.
If you're mostly only doing dungeons, you probably don't need Glyph of Word of Glory. You can safely swap it out for Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous. This one glyph will boost your DPS output to amazing levels on AoE mobs.
And again, if you're mostly doing dungeons and don't expect to raid tank, make your talent spec something like this (0/31/10). It gives you everything you need for AoE tanking and pushes your threat stats up front and center. Keep in mind you're giving up a fair amount of Word of Glory utility so you'll need to be on your toes with survival cool downs.
If I didn't use my off-spec for Retribution all the time, I'd run with two protection specs. (This goes into another rant about why Blizzard need to remove the spec-cap, but that's a different story)
So, you have your threat set. You've changed your glyphs and talents, and you're ready fro that bear run. Right? Well, before you head out, check a few things first.
Make sure your healer is okay with this. If a healer is under-geared, the slightly increased damage you take could make things messy, especially since you won't have WoG to fall back on. When you do get into a scuffle, play defensively - use Holy Shield wisely, and be careful not to over-pull. I would run this with a guildy healer or someone I know before doing the LFG thing with it.
I tested mine this weekend with the amazing Vidyala healing me (I love the cross-realm grouping with the Battle.Net system so much!) and have been using it ever since for everything but raid bosses. I ended that experimental Z'A run even with the DPS on damage done and had absolutely little trouble with threat. And I was pulling like mad on that run, as it turned into a spontaneous bear-run with 2 PuGs and no vent, and we still managed to get to Lynx boss with 2 minutes on the timer (but didn't make it).
Anyway. That's how I went about making a threat set and I'm loving it. If you do something similar, have any thoughts or try any of this in the field, please let me know, I'd love to tweak or change things around to optimize this in any way possible!
Good luck out there. :-)
So. I'm mostly interested in solutions, not just complaining. How do we get around this? Let's take about threat from the top.
Hit and Expertise are the two threat stats we're concerned with.
Hit is fairly obvious, it lets you hit things more accurately. The way it works out, you can refer to the following table to see how much hit you need at any given moment. Keep in mind, there is no mob in the game more than 3 levels above yours when you're at cap, so right now, raid bosses are level 88. As an aside, this means for your PvP set, you only need 5% hit.
| Difference in Level | Hit needed |
| 0 | 5% |
| 1 | 5.5% |
| 2 | 6% |
| 3 | 8% |
Expertise pushes your target's Dodge and Parry off the combat table. Melee DPS only need to push Dodge off the table as mobs can't parry attacks from behind, but tanks will need to worry about Parry. Expertise used to be really good for mitigation, as some bosses would gain a haste-buff any time they parried an attack, which gave tanks an incentive to stack Expertise, but that mechanic was taken out of the game and is no longer a factor. Expertise is purely for threat now.
The amount of expertise you need is the same for any mobs of a level higher than yours, but basically, 26 Expertise is the magical number you're looking for to kick Dodge off the table. Chasing the Parry cap is a loosing game and not worth the effort.
Okay, so why did you put that Hit chart up there?
Because you need to consider your environment, and what kind of threat output you need for that environment. The only mobs that need 8% hit are raid bosses. No other mobs in the game need 8% hit. Even heroic dungeon bosses are only level 87.
Why is this important? Get to the point, man!
Sorry, I tend to ramble. Unless you're tanking a farm raid-night to get through all of Tier 11 in 2.5 hours, you (generally) never need to worry about threat on a raid boss. Even if you don't have a hunter or rogue to give you Misdirects or Tricks, you should be able to have the raid sit on their hands for 5 to 10 seconds and with Wings, Inquisition and a small bit of luck, build up a solid lead before DPS goes nuts.
However, when you're clearing trash, when you're in a heroic dungeon, once you get some raid gear, build that threat set and use it.
So let's get set up for tanking dungeons and trash like threat kings.
A Hit cap of 6% means you need 720.65 hit rating. That isn't too much and honestly with items like Soul Blade, Elementium Earthguard
Paladins have it easy with Expertise. Glyph of Seal of Truth gives us an amazing 10 Expertise rating right off the bat. That's almost half the expertise you need total, from one glyph. You should always have this on. The rest you can get with some items here and there, or if you're feeling gutsy, with a Heart of Rage
One more thing - Glyphs and Talents.
If you're mostly only doing dungeons, you probably don't need Glyph of Word of Glory. You can safely swap it out for Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous. This one glyph will boost your DPS output to amazing levels on AoE mobs.
And again, if you're mostly doing dungeons and don't expect to raid tank, make your talent spec something like this (0/31/10).
Friday, June 10, 2011
I Still Queue As Tank For Dungeon Finder
I've talked earlier about my bad experiences in the Dungeon Finder system and I'm certainly not immune to the frustrations that come from dealing with DPS and Healers who have refused to recognize that I know what I'm doing, that the way I'm doing something is feasible and has worked in the past consistently, and refuse to accept the slightest criticism or suggestion offered up with a smiley.
But I still enjoy tanking for Dungeon Finder as there are some rewarding experiences to be had - I ran a few cap-heroics last night and here is how they went:
But I still enjoy tanking for Dungeon Finder as there are some rewarding experiences to be had - I ran a few cap-heroics last night and here is how they went:
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Heroically Forward
And then there was last night, with 3 other guildies and a guild-friend, where we knocked out SFK in about 30 minutes while I pulled like a rabid monkey on crack, chaining group after group to AoE down with nary a CC save for the occasional stun or Circle of Frost, like we were doing DTK after 3.3 dropped. We even wound up getting the Bullet Time achievement off the last boss because we were too busy yakking in Vent to kill him in a timely fashion and he just kept killing more and more ghouls.
Unfair.
About half-way done with the Glory of Cataclysm Hero. I should just spend a weekend and knock it all out with a guild group since most of them are silly-easy. There are a couple of toughies in there though - Faster Than The Speed of Light and Headed South come to mind, and a couple that require perfect execution and you only get one shot at them per dungeon - like Vigorous VanCleef Vindicator and Rotten to the Core. But otherwise, they're mostly doable without too much hassle.
And you get a mount. I like mounts a lot.
Unfair.
About half-way done with the Glory of Cataclysm Hero. I should just spend a weekend and knock it all out with a guild group since most of them are silly-easy. There are a couple of toughies in there though - Faster Than The Speed of Light and Headed South come to mind, and a couple that require perfect execution and you only get one shot at them per dungeon - like Vigorous VanCleef Vindicator and Rotten to the Core. But otherwise, they're mostly doable without too much hassle.
And you get a mount. I like mounts a lot.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Current Progression Ladder
A lot of folks are getting really upset with the level of difficulty that Heroics represent, and casual players in particular are frustrated with their inability to get groups to successfully run heroics.
I totally understand the issue, as I find myself wondering how someone who's not used to reading will handle movement mechanics while juggling add management on fights like Heroic: Corborus, or the constant running, dodging cluster-fuck that is Heroic: General Husam. How do they manage the interrupts and burn phase of Heroic: Baron Ashbury? What do they do when they run into Heroic: Ripsnarl?
But I think another way to look at this, is that in the first tier of content, Heroics are now officially a level of gear and difficulty above normal dungeons. This is the reason, a month into the expansion, we still have world-first top-end guilds working on heroic modes in Raids after all the time they spent on them on the Beta.
For the last year, this was the lay of the land:
Top-End: Retired
Hardcore: Heroic: Lich King.
Serious: Heroic: ICC and Helion
Everyone else: Any content in the game. Even normal LK was ridiculously easy by August/September.
At the end of the expansion, that made sense. Right now, there isn't all that much end-game content in the game and I think, the lay of the land is this:
Top-End: Heroic Raids
Harcore: Raids
Serious: Heroics/early raiding
Casual: Everything else
I think if we approach the current difficulty level with this lens, it makes sense. Yes, casual players who're not raiding and are not used to the level of difficulty that raid-bosses and non tank-and-spank bosses present are going to have a hell of time in heroics. They can either train up to them or they can wait till 4.1 drops when all the Valor gear will become Justice gear.
The 3 normal dungeons at 84-85 are also great for training and you can outfit yourself in a full 333/346 set from normal dungeons, Justice Points gear (sl0wly), reputation items (some 359 items there too), and crafting. I don't think it's a slight if you have problems running Heroics right now.
Think back to December or January when you queued up and got Heroic: Halls of Reflections. You knew it was work. You knew it was effort. Now, scale that up to every heroic. That's what this is. And I for one am enjoying the ever-loving hell out of it.
As for me - so far I've killed every boss except for Heroic: Commander Springvale and Heroic: Erudax. I'm chomping at the bit to kill Erudax because it'll complete my meta but Heroic: Grim Batol has been kicking my ass for a while so I'm giong to give it a break for a bit.
I'll start writing up my impressions of the dungeons so maybe it can be helpful to folks having trouble in heroics.
Time to complete all the other dungeons with guild-groups and then prep for Throne of Four Winds. Raids start on the 11th. Eeeeek!
I totally understand the issue, as I find myself wondering how someone who's not used to reading will handle movement mechanics while juggling add management on fights like Heroic: Corborus, or the constant running, dodging cluster-fuck that is Heroic: General Husam. How do they manage the interrupts and burn phase of Heroic: Baron Ashbury? What do they do when they run into Heroic: Ripsnarl?
But I think another way to look at this, is that in the first tier of content, Heroics are now officially a level of gear and difficulty above normal dungeons. This is the reason, a month into the expansion, we still have world-first top-end guilds working on heroic modes in Raids after all the time they spent on them on the Beta.
For the last year, this was the lay of the land:
Top-End: Retired
Hardcore: Heroic: Lich King.
Serious: Heroic: ICC and Helion
Everyone else: Any content in the game. Even normal LK was ridiculously easy by August/September.
At the end of the expansion, that made sense. Right now, there isn't all that much end-game content in the game and I think, the lay of the land is this:
Top-End: Heroic Raids
Harcore: Raids
Serious: Heroics/early raiding
Casual: Everything else
I think if we approach the current difficulty level with this lens, it makes sense. Yes, casual players who're not raiding and are not used to the level of difficulty that raid-bosses and non tank-and-spank bosses present are going to have a hell of time in heroics. They can either train up to them or they can wait till 4.1 drops when all the Valor gear will become Justice gear.
The 3 normal dungeons at 84-85 are also great for training and you can outfit yourself in a full 333/346 set from normal dungeons, Justice Points gear (sl0wly), reputation items (some 359 items there too), and crafting. I don't think it's a slight if you have problems running Heroics right now.
Think back to December or January when you queued up and got Heroic: Halls of Reflections. You knew it was work. You knew it was effort. Now, scale that up to every heroic. That's what this is. And I for one am enjoying the ever-loving hell out of it.
As for me - so far I've killed every boss except for Heroic: Commander Springvale and Heroic: Erudax. I'm chomping at the bit to kill Erudax because it'll complete my meta but Heroic: Grim Batol has been kicking my ass for a while so I'm giong to give it a break for a bit.
I'll start writing up my impressions of the dungeons so maybe it can be helpful to folks having trouble in heroics.
Time to complete all the other dungeons with guild-groups and then prep for Throne of Four Winds. Raids start on the 11th. Eeeeek!
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Dungeons
Is there anything more fun than running the new dungeons?
They're lovely, designed with a depth of detail that we saw in raids but was missing from prior 5-mans, a length that feels "just right" in theory, and with boss-fights that are rarely tank and spank.
My favorite dungeon is probably Halls of Origination but Lost City comes a very, very close second, and I love Vortex Pinnacle and Grim Batol as well.
The other two dungeons - Stonecore and Blackrock Descent - are also good, but not as amazing as the first four. I especially love the storytelling in Blackrock Descent, even if I get a bit annoyed at Raz for all the rep-stealing he does. Speaking of rep-stealing, it's a fun mini game during the bombing runs in Grim Batol, to get the mob clumbs low but not to kill them so that all that lovely, lovely rep doesn't evaporate in a puff of dragon-breath.
I'm really glad to have a couple of dungeons in Blackrock to go beat on because of the nostalgia. I didn't play in Vanilla, but as a first-time leveler during TBC, I remember standing around that summoning stone on that floating chunk of rock and watching that black drake fly around and above us, a lot. It was gratifying to finallyfly in on my own black mount and scare off that silly little whelp.
The only dungeon that feels a bit retread-dungeon-ey is, sadly, Throne of Tides - I like it a lot, but the color-scheme is so Wrath of the Lich King that I kind of blot out all the cool stuff going on in there. The Kraken cut-scene should also be trimmed with a option to re-watch, but I'm not sure how to make that happen.
Speaking of retreads, I've been enjoying the ever-loving-hell out of Heroic: Deadmines, though I haven't had the pleasure of poking through Heroic: Shadowfang Keep yet. As a life-long member of the Alliance (more or less) I never had the level of nostalgia attached to that place as, back in the day, it was pretty easy to skip that dungeon entirely, the way it was tucked all the way fuck out of in the middle of nowhere as far as lowby-alliance-leveling was concerned.
One of the things I love about all these dungeons is that they are so rarely tank-and-spank. I've been running all the dungeons as both Retribution and Protection spec, and no matter what, I find myself doing cool stuff. Using Repentance on trash pulls, running in and out of fire all the time, managing boss-mechanics, staying on top of interrupts, switch-killing or picking up adds - dungeons are exciting.
It's too early to pick favorite bosses yet. But I'm enjoying the game a lot. So much I want to talk about!
They're lovely, designed with a depth of detail that we saw in raids but was missing from prior 5-mans, a length that feels "just right" in theory, and with boss-fights that are rarely tank and spank.
My favorite dungeon is probably Halls of Origination but Lost City comes a very, very close second, and I love Vortex Pinnacle and Grim Batol as well.
The other two dungeons - Stonecore and Blackrock Descent - are also good, but not as amazing as the first four. I especially love the storytelling in Blackrock Descent, even if I get a bit annoyed at Raz for all the rep-stealing he does. Speaking of rep-stealing, it's a fun mini game during the bombing runs in Grim Batol, to get the mob clumbs low but not to kill them so that all that lovely, lovely rep doesn't evaporate in a puff of dragon-breath.
I'm really glad to have a couple of dungeons in Blackrock to go beat on because of the nostalgia. I didn't play in Vanilla, but as a first-time leveler during TBC, I remember standing around that summoning stone on that floating chunk of rock and watching that black drake fly around and above us, a lot. It was gratifying to finallyfly in on my own black mount and scare off that silly little whelp.
The only dungeon that feels a bit retread-dungeon-ey is, sadly, Throne of Tides - I like it a lot, but the color-scheme is so Wrath of the Lich King that I kind of blot out all the cool stuff going on in there. The Kraken cut-scene should also be trimmed with a option to re-watch, but I'm not sure how to make that happen.
Speaking of retreads, I've been enjoying the ever-loving-hell out of Heroic: Deadmines, though I haven't had the pleasure of poking through Heroic: Shadowfang Keep yet. As a life-long member of the Alliance (more or less) I never had the level of nostalgia attached to that place as, back in the day, it was pretty easy to skip that dungeon entirely, the way it was tucked all the way fuck out of in the middle of nowhere as far as lowby-alliance-leveling was concerned.
One of the things I love about all these dungeons is that they are so rarely tank-and-spank. I've been running all the dungeons as both Retribution and Protection spec, and no matter what, I find myself doing cool stuff. Using Repentance on trash pulls, running in and out of fire all the time, managing boss-mechanics, staying on top of interrupts, switch-killing or picking up adds - dungeons are exciting.
It's too early to pick favorite bosses yet. But I'm enjoying the game a lot. So much I want to talk about!
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