Tanking Legendary

We've been collecting materials as we kill bosses in Firelands and as I watch our Shadow Priest picked for the Legendary collect them, I feel a pang of jealousy. We didn't do a lot of 25-man content in Wrath, but I did run some 25s with big guilds, and I felt the same pang watching their DKs and Priests collecting Shards for Shadowmourne and Val'anyr.

And next tier, I'll watch our Rogue collect the Fangs of the Father.

At this point, every role has had a legendary except for tanks. Healers have had Val'anyr, melee DPS have had the Warglaives, Sulfuras, Thunderfury, and Shadowmourne, hunters had Thori'dal, and pretty much every caster could use Atiesh and Dragonwrath.

You could make the point that Death Knights used Shadowmourne to tank, but that still left 3/4 of tanking classes without a tanking Legendary.

Point being, tanks have never had a legendary tanking weapon, and a lot of the reasoning behind it is that there are way too many tanking classes that all use different weapons.

The bigger (and real) reason is that if you have a Legendary that only one or two tank classes can use, every raid will drop the other tanks to make room for them. If a raid was tanking with a DK and a Druid, they would drop one or both to bring in a Paladin and Warrior if there was a Legendary shield, and they would certainly be right to do so. And that completely screws up the tanking population and rightly so, isolates and insults those who can't get it.

Tanks are generally the characters who gear up the fastest in raids - they have little competition over drops and the more geared your tanks get, the easier it is for the raid to progress as they can ignore the "tank can't take hits" problem and focus on other issues of the raid. Tank gear matters and I can see balance issues with giving one tank a legendary and essentially making him a Main Tank which is a concept I absolutely loathe.

There are two tanks, they both do their jobs, swapping from one duty to the other as benefits their class abilities best. But I digress.

You hear about Blizzard doing a tanking legendary in the same way that they did Quel'Delar. It comes close but I can see Blizzard's point in rejecting that model for a legendary - something like that makes for an awesome questline and an epic item, but not for a Legendary weapon that needs to be instantly recognizable, is iconic, and, well, Legendary. An item, of monumental power, not something with multiple models.

So how do you reconcile this? I might have a thought.

Make a Legendary Mace.

Every tank class can use Maces. The model can stay the same.

Tweak it so that it can be used two-handed by Druids and DKs with a boost to stats to make up for a missign off-hand, and keep the same model for it across the board.

It is the same weapon in essence, it's just that Druids and DKs need to use it two-handed. Whatever stats and bonus it has should probably be tailored to tanking to keep it from DPS hands and you could probably have a tanking legendary.

Would I rather have a Palain specific questline and build a Holy Aegis that will sing with pathos and grace? A shield that would be a beacon in the darkest of places? A barrier against the most grievous harm?

Absolutely. But, you know. I'm willing to share with the other classes and settle for a mace. I'm sure there are other solutions out there, but I think this is a reasonable one even if it would require Blizzard to scale the item a bit differently between the 2-handed and 1-handed versions of it.

There are solutions out there, and I hope Blizzard keeps this in mind going into the next expansion.

Catching Up

There is so much going on in game, and at the same time, so little. This will be rambling, I guess!

After a weird week of suck on my part, we're back on track with killing new bosses and progression is chuggling along. I expect we'll get to 6 heroic bosses within a month or so - definitely before the next patch, and that makes me happy. I'd love to spend at least a whole week on Heroic Ragnaros with a rock-solid group before the next patch comes, just to experience it. But that's some ways away for us, we're just starting to collect heroic gear now.

Our main issue is still that last one or two floating spot that becomes difficult to juggle.

I was informed that one of our core raiders who has been with us for over two years now, is going to be retiring after Deathwing. Which is awesome, he's excited to move on with his life and stuff, and I wish him the best, but it does leave a rather large hole in our roster, and not just in terms of a slot to be replaced,  but in terms of a person who was our friend for a long, long time. We'll fill the slot, but we can't replace the person.

Last night, our decked out and geared hunter's PC overheated to the point of making the game unplayable for her and she bowed out until she can afford a replacement machine but we brought in someone who was benched for the night and were able to do stuff.

I hope she's able to come back soon but we'll do what we can in the meantime. The issue becomes that if I do recruit another person to replace this hunter, I'll wind up in a situation where I'll have to play musical chairs again (and after the fiasco I went through last month with a raider upset about progression vs. gearing, I really don't want to deal with it again.)

Our Legendary continues to build, our first collector is about a third of the way through the Cinders and the second person collecting Embers is about two weeks from getting the Branch and we have a third person lined up for it after that. We'll get one Legendary out, I think, maybe get to phase 2 of the second one if 4.3 doesn't come out till late December. But still, it's nice to have it accessible - even if the process if fairly dull to collect mat rather than a series of awesome events like the extra boss.

Speaking of Legendaries, I'm seriously considering leveling a rogue just so I can do the quest-line in 4.3 - it looks freaking awesome. We only have one raiding rogue, and I'd be glad to build a second set of daggers. I love the sneaky, underhanded, do whatever it takes to win, not evil but not good by any measure, anti-hero protagonists like the new Prince of the Black Dragonflight is shaping out to be. Let's hope he is elevated to becoming the new aspect and reinvigorating the Flight and transforming them into what they were meant to be!

Of course, there is no tank legendary on the horizon, and I'll just cry about that over here after I've seen Valy'nar, Shadowmourne, and Dragonwrath crafted for other classes and specs. I look forward to crafting Father's Fangs for our resident rogue in the future.

After playing this game for so long, I just want one Legendary I can use on my main. I'll whine about this later, I have a feeling I have more to say on this topic.