The View From Down Here

Mother Shazznabit

Mother Shahraz down. Twice in three days - we got her down on Tuesday, and then again after the reset on Wednesday.

I have to say, though, I’m disappointed with the encounter. The Black Temple is starting to look more and more like one of the seedier backstreets in Silvermoon city, and the boss herself is so straightforward as to be ridiculous. It’s disappointing that a tier 6 boss should be almost one-shottable for a raid that’s never seen her before. The Shadow resist aspect of the fight means the only really interesting thing to happen is Fatal Attraction, and as a tank that can’t happen to me. No, for me the fight isn’t one that really feels like it belongs in a top-end raid instance, and feels more like a Karazhan encounter raised to 25 people. Ho-hum.

At least next, the Illidari Council, will be a challenge. It’s been described to me as High King Maulgar on Steroids, five times as hard again. Should be a great fight to learn.

An End to A Myth

Say it with me: 3.0.2 will make protection soloing viable. There, you’ve just uttered something almost completely incorrect.

It’s based on a complete misassumption that so many people seem to hold, that Prot soloing is non-viable currently. I’ve no idea who started this thought, but so many people seem to hold it in their heads that they can’t solo as a Protection warrior. All too often I’ve seen warriors on the Isle of Quel’Danas, or elsewhere, laying into mobs, shield in one hand, sword or axe in the other. The only explanation I can think of is that no-one has educated them in how to gear for soloing.

Protection warriors, when soloing (or dpsing), should gear entirely differently to when tanking. It’s OK to be indestructable, but it’s also incredibly dull. No, there are much better ways of doing things, and it disappoints me to think that no-one has ever told these warriors how to not want to kill themselves when they’re not tanking for a group.

When Soloing, Prot warriors should gear to dual wield, with slow weapons in each hand - something like [Claw of Molten Fury] in one hand, and [Fury] in the other. Go for at least 142 hit, but no more than 200, and stack crit and strength. Just hit devastate repeatedly, and use Whirlwind whenever it’s up.

Using such a rotation and gear on bosses I’ve offtanked, I’ve hit over 1000 dps in raids. That’s not too shabby given most of my gear is unenchanted and I almost never have any dps-oriented consumables with me.

Come the patch, the gearing will change somewhat - go for no more than 142 hit, and stack the rest in strength. The incoming Sword and Board talent and changes to shield block value will mean that you will be able to dps effectively with a shield, much better than now.

In one way, it’s a shame that such massive and far-reaching talent changes are needed to dispel the myth that a protection warrior can’t dps. On another, I look forward to no longer having to beat my head against a brick wall when I see someone trying to down a mob with a [Shield of Impenetrable Darkness] and a [King's Defender].

Well, maybe, the sword is still probably a bad pick for dps, but it’s still an improvement on before…

A Difficult Easy Fight

Archimonde is one of the easiest fights in the game. It’s also one of the hardest. The strategy is ridiculously simple - avoid dying for ten minutes, and do minimal dps - but execution is a problem. Any member of the raid dying can, and usually does, very rapidly turn the tables against the raid.

Last night The Hidden Circle downed him for the very first time, finally mastering the exacting requirements of clicking [Tears of the Goddess] at the right time to avoid leaving a raider-shaped crater in the ground, and keeping away from the fire. As Main Tank for the fight, I avoid the first problem entirely, and to some extent the second, too, unless doomfire snakes around to target me. No, in the context of Archi, the tank’s main aims are to keep threat on the boss, keep him in place and stance dance the fears (1.5s cast, so it’s quite a bit harder than Nightbane’s).

I wasn’t happy at all with my performance last night. On a couple of occasions I was so obsessed waiting for the fear to be cast, I’d blow my stance-dance on a cast of something else while fear was up. It’s fine to be able to react so quickly, but yesterday at times I was all over the place, reacting too soon - before the cast bar had even told me what was being cast!

So, yes, Archimonde’s down. I’m not happy about it though. I feel like I could have done so much better. Next time, I will.

…but Naaru don’t have arms!

Yesterday I was finally awarded something different. For the past few months, I’ve been wandering around Outland and Azeroth as Namthe of the More Money Than Sense.

Now, at long last, I’m instead Namthe of the Too Much Time On His Hands. Now I’m actually attuned to Black Temple and Mount Hyjal, there’s a feeling of entitlement to be there that wasn’t there before.

Of the Kael and Vashj fights, I have to say I vastly prefer the Vashj fight. There’s a hectic energy to it, far more than there is in Kael’s long, scripted (and frequently extremely dull) encounter. The random but not too random element to it seems far better than the clinicalness of the “Do this, then do this, then do this” of prince Kael’Thas. And you’re not screaming for a fast forward button after the second try at the boss.

Perfect for bouncing off tables…

A little tip for all those who didn’t think Brewfest had anything to offer them: the on-uses of [Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600] and [Coren's Lucky Coin] stack.

This gives crazily huge shield slam damage. Given the new way protection dps and soloing is looking to work (Shield slam / Devastate rotation), it’ll be worth grabbing the coin while you can.

What kind of day will it be?

 
So, now I’m on the PTR, how is my gear holding up? Well, to start with, let’s take a look at how my current tanking gear holds up:

2.4.3

This is my “trash” set - it’s the one I wear most often for tanking trash mobs, and is the basis for most other sets, - I swap in different pieces according to the boss. At 519 defense, it’s not too shabby, and decent enough values for avoidance. I don’t gear for block at all - it’s a useless stat as the game (in live!) stands currently.

Let’s look at how the same set of my gear changes once the PTR arrives (incidentally, I’m still making my mind up about the bleach job):

As at patch 3.0.2

I’ve lost nearly 2% avoidance and I’m crittable! Lots more strength, sure, but avoidance is way down, so those hits I do manage to block are going to be less. Unfortunately there’ll be lots more of them. At least crushing blows won’t happen ever again, so the damage I take will be more constant.

How do I plan to fix this? Swap my [Praetorian's Legguards] for [Sunguard Legplates]. That will help, even though the defense on the latter is being reduced (See MMO-Champion). After that I’ll just have to fiddle till I hit that magical 490. 

I had planned on discussing more, but my PTR time today was limited to 5 minutes as it’s horribly overloaded and I can’t get in again after a crash. So, more discussion coming later.

The Great Addon Hunt

With 3.0.2 not so far away at all, it’s time to start looking at how my UI will cope with being brought kicking and screaming into Northrend.

Namthe hasn’t made it as far as the PTR yet, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. To play with a Level 1 character gets me a bit of time to fiddle with addons without having the millions of settings my main’s weighed down with.

So far, only two of my biggest addons, Prat and Bongos3, turn out to be huge problems. It turns out that Bongos3 is dead. However, fortunately, the replacement from the same author looks at first glance to be suitable for what I want. I’m not sure I could stomach moving back to something like Bartender. There’s still lots of pain involved in migrating my settings, though. Hopefully I can get dominos to play properly on live so I don’t have to put up with other PTR problems while I fix my keybindings. Again.

Prat is even less of a problem. Prat-3.0 is present in the WowAcerepository, so I can snag it from there with no problems at all.

Another issue is that the tooltips for my FuBar addons seem to have broken themselves, and none of them show the right information. That will take more fixing, I think.

Lastly, Talented doesn’t work - but then I’d be amazed if it did. I imagine there’ll be a fix version soon - but if there isn’t I’ll cope.

Conclusion, then: Most of my addons are currently horribly broken. Hurrah! Hopefully in the next few weeks I can fix my UI up so it still works come 3.0.2. Next time I’ll look at how my character and equipment has held up under all the changes.

What kind of day has it been?

As I write this, I’m dowloading the last PTR patch that will ever be released for The Burning Crusade. In a few weeks, everything will start over again and I’ll make a whole new set of assumptions about the future of my characters.

So, going into the Burning Crusade, what were my assumptions?

• Ziraxx would continue to be my main
• If I was lucky, I’d get to see Karazhan once a week or so
• I might play around and level a Shaman 

How many of them were right? Well, Ziraxx was my main for another four months or so. At that point, with a bit of a shortage of tanks around, one of my guildmates (and good friends) said “Z, you’re good at playing this game. Why don’t you level a tank?”. The rest, as they say, is history. Nowadays I can’t imagine playing my rogue again - nowadays the only reason he’s ever touched is to open the odd lockbox. It must be six months since I even ventured out of Shattrath on him.

As for Karazhan, I saw plenty of it, enough that it takes a lot to make we want to set foot in the place now. As for the 25-man raids, what I hoped would be an occasional thing is now all I do in-game, pretty much. I’m looking forward to the new quests and new content immeasurably. And, bizarrely enough, I’m now starting to feel the same way about Mount Hyjal as Karazhan - I’ll go there but I’d rather see any other 25-man (apart from maybe Gruul’s and Mag’s) instead.

My shaman? Well, I got as far as rolling one. Xenophilia (for that is her name) never made it past level 14 though - in fact, having tried almost every class (except priests and mages), she’s the character I’d say I’ve least enjoyed playing thus far.

What of the future? It remains to be seen. Hopefully once I have the PTR client installed, I’ll be able to make some sense of what’s coming up for me. And I’ll make some new predictions and assumptions, which will, of course, turn out to be utterly wrong.

Turning a corner

I haven’t written much recently because there’s not been much to say. Pre-WoTLK blues seems to be digging in across the server, with fewer people registering for raids and lots of late deregging. It’s plaguing other guilds too - I’ve had a couple of not-so-subtle approaches from more progressed guilds asking me to come tank for them (I’m not going to).

Yesterday that all changed. After a spot of drama on the guild forums resulting from one person dropping out of a raid at the last minute so they could go on a non-guild raid, there seems to have been something of a collective realisation of what we’re all here for. For a change everything clicked, despite the trash wipe and silly wipe on Supremus. We remebered we’re there to have a good time, and we did.

No idea how long it will continue, but a while yet I hope.

Things I have learned in the past two weeks

• The state of Ohio legislature doesn’t allow for anyone from outside the US to buy alcohol. This sucks.
• The WoTLK warrior tanking tree seems to have turned a corner and is starting to look like it might be getting somewhere

OK, so less of the first point (actually, it’s not quite true, it’s just that US drivers’ licenses are the only ID explicitly mentioned in the Ohio Revised Code so many bars only accept those. US Military ID doesn’t pass muster either, amazingly.)

More on the second. I’m not sure when, but suddenly I’m excited about the warrior changes again. And there’s not much that’s changed. Suddenly things like Critical Block have been changed to be actually useful. Hell, even Improved Defensive Stance is looking immensely cool, and I’m very much looking forward to playing it.

My talent build, come 3.0.2 (not that far off it seems) will be along the lines of this. And I’m very much looking forward to having passive talents other than Cruelty to boost my threat.