“Hey,” said Tirion Fordring as they entered the antechamber. “Is this some kind of joke?”

I’ve recently had occasion to go through my old screen grabs, and one in particular grabbed my attention. It’s of The Hidden Circle in Serpentshrine Cavern, and it was taken by my girlfriend during an attempt against Morogrim Tidewalker.

The big thing to notice is that there are four tanks in the Main Tank frames. A paladin, a bear and two warriors. Thinking back to that level of content, almost everything needed three or more tanks. There were the odd fights that needed one or two, but they were an exception much more than a rule.

THC’s current regular tanking team consists of one of each of the current tanking classes, and these days we can never take more than three of us into a raid. And three tanks is one too many for most fights in Icecrown, the vast majority being suited to exactly two (the same number as are needed in the 10-man versions of the same fights).

If all four of us do get in the same raid, it’ll be because at least one person needs to DPS rather than tank because we don’t have enough DPS signups. And that’s a damn shame. I long for fights like Al’ar where two tanks are taunt-swapping the boss while another two deal with phoenix adds, or for Kael’thas where we all had something to grab hold of.

Instead the limitations of encounters scaling between 10 and 25 players swing into force. In the cases where a third tank is needed, it’s down to lazy encounter design – witness Professor Putricide where tank no.3 has nothing to do but pretend to DPS for phases one and two and most of phase 3, or the “Add one more target to the saber lash” scaling of Marrowgar. Even on the add fights – Lady Deathwhisper and Valrithia Dreamwalker, we’re better off with fewer tanks and more DPS as it’s all about raw damage output.

This can only be bad for tanking in the long run; tanking was already the hardest role to land a regular raid spot with. And now the encounter design doesn’t lend itself to tank scaling, I wonder how long it will be before the number of tanks in the 25-man raid is “fixed” at two, simply because the encounter’s easier to code that way.

Blizzard may have said that they didn’t wany dual-spec to influence raiding, but given the challenges in meeting some encounters’ hard enrage timers, I do have to wonder if that is really the case.

So, overall, we have about the same number of bosses in Lich King than in Burning Crusade (and I haven’t even counted the loot pinata that is Vault of Archavon). Admittedly, that includes a number of recycled bosses, but in the case of Naxx almost nobody saw it at level 60, and Onyxia is only a single digit drop if we discount her.

No, the problem is this – difficulty level. Those raids who worked hard because they want to see the content now have to work less hard, and get through it more quickly than they did before.

Normal modes are about pitched between the old bosses and the new hard Modes. Many see the content, they see no reason to do hard mode, they get bored. There’s no less content, it’s just easier. Perhaps a little too easy. By allowing more people to see the content, perhaps Blizzard have shot themselves in the foot. Those who wanted to see it before now do it in half the time and get bored. Those who stood no chance before for whatever reason still haven’t.

There’s more content than ever before. The trouble is it doesn’t last anywhere near as long.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Two new bosses this week, and then we have to wait until Onyxia (and then Icecrown) before there’s any more new gear available. And, to be honest, they were both somewhat of a disappointment. First up, Koralon the Flame Watcher. I knew vaguely what he was capable of, and went into the encounter expecting something straightforward. I wasn’t quite prepared for how incredibly straightforward it was going to be. An air of definite anticlimax accompanied the kill; all the more because it felt orders of magnitude easier than the Coliseum bosses. The gear just didn’t feel earned.

And then there was Anub’Arak. Also quite straightforward – one-shotted in 10-man, got him second go on 25. The sole problem was too many DPS on the adds rather than the boss himself. Admittedly the entire encounter feels epic thanks to the lead-in to the boss, but, still, Faction Champions feels like the hardest boss in there by a long way. Doesn’t feel right.

In any case, killing Anub means that we can now attempt hard mode. And we did – to say it was hard would be an understatement. I’ve not done badly out of gear from normal Trial of the Crusader, but … well, insane isn’t really the word. At times we had 60k+ damage coming in to tanks in half a second. Given I have 48k health raid buffed, there’s just a smidgeon of difference there. By rotating cooldowns, we managed to down Gormok, but only just. I have no clue how we’ll see Dreadscale and Icemaw through. There’s scope for improvement, but… damn, perfection as a requirement I haven’t seen in a long, long time.

Now I know how people raiding Sunwell pre-nerf felt.

Not so long ago, in fact, only last week, I said that Sartharion with three drakes up was still almost impossible for a prot warrior to main tank. Funny how these things work out.

Pretty much exactly the same as last week, we downed Yogg early in the evening and again had the qaundary of what to do for the rest of the night. Once again being without Feral tank or DK, I was unceremoniously plonked down in front of the dragon, a Gnomish sacrifice. This time, though, we had a Plan, deserving of the capital P. It was  Plan that required careful communication between myself and the healers, but not much else. If you too want to main tank Sartharion as a warrior, here’s what you will need:

• Two Priests – one  Discipline, one Holy
• One Paladin (spec doesn’t really matter, but don’t use your paladin offtank for this)

Tanking is much the same as with two, one or no drakes still up.  There is only one pain point through the entire encounter, and it’s at the moment that the second drake lands. At this point, if you’re lucky, the first drake will be dead. If not, it’s still achievable but you’ll need to be even more on the ball. At this point you need to call whenever there’s an incoming firebreath, for the appropriate cooldown to be used:

• Guardian Spirit
• Shield Wall
• Pain Suppression / Last Stand
• Hand of Sacrifice

By the time four breaths have come and gone, the second drake should also be dead, and you can (more or less) stroll to victory. Surprisingly the Tier 8 set bonus doesn’t help so much as you might expect, because the breaths come so often and unpredictably. Cooldown spec is, I think, more of a hindrance than a help here (by the time things are back off cooldown you’re a lot safer anyway).

So the moral of the story is – nothing’s impossible. It just takes careful application of your abilities, most especially the ability to communicate. Hav faith in your abilities and the rest will follow.

If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliway’s, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?
- Douglas Adams

However, our strategy was eventually formed, and it’s a little different than what I’ve seen elsewhere. Rather than kite the boss, we aimed to keep him in one place all the time.  This helped immensely with spacing as well, giving us one less thing to worry about. Of course, the problem is that there are new things to worry about. However, by treating the fight like the three drakes fight, and arranging cooldowns accordingly, we were able to arrive at a strategy that worked reasonably well.

We used the following:

• A Warrior tank with Improved Disciplines, Glyph of Shield Wall and Glyph of Last Stand
• A Holy Priest
• A Discipline priest

The cooldown on Vezax’s tank-splatting move, Surge of Darkness is sixty seconds. Armed with that knowledge, we were able to use the following spell rotation so that the boss didn’t have to move:

• 1st cast: Shield Wall
• 2nd cast: Pain Suppression, Last Stand and dodge trinkets
• 3rd cast: Shield Wall
• 4th cast: Guardian Spirit, Last Stand and dodge trinkets
• 5th cast: Shield Wall
• … and so on

A different strategy to what’s recommended, I know, and one that’s slightly more healing intensive, but it works for us. And once our DPS have learned to not suicide in the saronite clouds (best attempt was 6%), then I’m pretty sure we’ll see him dead.

Anyway, good DPS will all be threatening you all of the time in terms of pulling aggro. You can yell over teamspeak for your teammates to watch their threat, but that will only get you so far. You can ask for Hand of Salvation to be cast on someone, but again, there’s the little issue of the cooldown on the spell meaning it can’t be used that often (and in any case, the Paladin is probably a little too busy doing things like keeping your plate-covered arse alive).

No, warriors, and especially warrior tanks, have a secret weapon when it comes to keeping at the top of the meters. Intervene isn’t very useful for most single-tank fights, but there is one occasion that makes the Hodir fight so much better than most for it – Flash Freeze.

The moment that Flash Freeze is cast, I target the person who’s highest on Omen and Intervene to them. If your raid is sufficiently clueful, they’ll be standing next to a snowdrift, so that moving across the room isn’t going to be a problem – you’ll have plenty of time to get into a safe position. If your DPS are nowhere near a safe place, then intervening to them and getting frozen yourself is the least of your problems.

If you can afford (or even need) to be mobile while a boss is casting something, don’t be afraid to intervene. The extra DPS that might allow the raid to squeeze out can make all the difference.

That is fair enough. I will happily accept responsibility for any problems which are a direct result of my actions. I’m not a robot, and I’ll make mistakes on occasion. I’ll also learn from those mistakes.

However – if you’re going to criticise me for wasting your food buffs and elixirs, I’ll be more inclined to listen to you if you’ve proved that you can perform your own role in the raid without problems. I don’t expect perfection, of course, to do so would be hypocritical, but…

… people who don’t know their left from their right on Thaddius, can’t dance on Heigan, and are too short sighted to see they’re standing in a fissure on Kel’Thuzad, or even all three, despite the fact that we’ve been farming these bosses for months, really should sort their own problems out before complaining about mine.

Incidentally, for those who are trying to work out which members of the raid are failing them the most, the Failbot addon is a godsend.

In other news, it turns out that using Baby Spice on Kel’Thuzad is a bad idea. It may look comical, but it also shrinks his hitbox making it all the more difficult for everyone to stand around him safely. I’m not sure who did that, but hopefully it won’t happen again.

Three Drakes. No waiting.

Well-deserved by so many people who have stuck at this for the last few weeks, Sartharion is defeated on “ultra-hard” mode.

Roll on Ulduar…

For a start, Last Stand is having its cooldown reduced to 3 minutes.  When glyphed with Glyph of Last Stand, this suddenly means that Last Stand could be up all the time. I don’t believe for a second that will be attainable, but by nerfing the glyph to a 2 minute reduction, the minimum I expect to see, we’ll still see the ability available once a minute to boost health by 20% for 20 seconds.

Add to that the new glyph – Glyph of Shield Wall. It’s a similar deal to that of the Last stand glyph:

Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.

When properly talented with Improved Disciplines, Shield Wall too gains a 1 minute cooldown. This suddenly means that the 4-piece set bonus for Tier 7 gear (an extra 3 seconds on Shield Wall) means a lot more than it did.

There are two things that this could mean.

The first is that these are just the first iteration of testing and they’ll be nerfed back down to an appropriate level. Fine, I say. That isn’t too much of a problem – PTRs are for testing, and by making extreme changes and then gradually moving them back to a point where they’re comfortable, Blizzard can be sure to get them to a point at which they’re much better balanced against other tanking trees.

The second, and which has been partially borne out by the Hodir fight on the PTRs (melee strikes of 25k), is that we’ll be seeing a lot more encounters in which we take a lot of damage, like Patchwerk and Brutallus. It will mean that it’s not complete suicide for a warrior to tank an encounter such as Sartharion with all three drakes up. And, most importantly, it will make the decision to use panic buttons so much easier.

Of course, dual specialisation will be our saviour here too. A strict survivability spec might well depend on these two glyphs. Adding a full set of threat glyphs in the second means the choice is always there.

The amount of time I have spent playing my rogue since Namthe reached level 70 is probably in the order of two hours or so. The mechanics seem alien to me (far more alien, even than the mana-using classes that I’ve tried since). It’s seemingly true that you can never go back.

So, on to Malygos then. For the uninitiated, the first two portions of the encounter are reasonably within the norm. First you fight the dragon himself, and following that there are a number of his underlings to dispatch.

And then everything changes. Once the minions are defeated, the entire encounter changes massively. Suddenly, the floor vanishes and you start to plunge to your doom, only to be caught by members of the Red Dragonflight. Yes, it’s a boss based on vehicle-based combat, with the hateful combo points and energy mechanic. In three dimensions.

You can practice this by doing the Aces High daily, and I have done – but the daily is very much different in so far as the dragons you have to kill don’t have all that much longevity – they drop dead very quickly. I would get stuck at around 10 stacks of the dubuff on occasion as the errors introduced in my poor energy management combined with the occasional need for shielding finally caught up with me.  It didn’t help that the mod I was using (MalygosCP) to track debuffs and combo points, was lying to me about how many I had applied.

So, this is one area where I’m going to work harder to improve. It’s just annoying that it requires a raid to practice it well.