When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Your weapon, your shield, and offtanking

I was busy farming arena points for my Merciless Gladiator’s Gavel when I get a tell from one of our tankadins who was having trouble maintaining a respectable place on the threat meter for Gruul’s. As I was in the middle of getting viciously pwned, I didn’t have time for a proper response. Bradford (of “What not to wear” fame), here’s your response.

OFF-TANKING the CORISTAD WAY (your mileage may vary)

Before the fight, I ask the raid leader if it’s at all possible to be put in a group with either a shadow priest or a shaman. Either will buff your threat capabilities significantly. It may not be possible, and you should plan on not having the luxury, but it never hurts to ask. Also before the fight, I equip as much spell damage and on-use trinkets as possible WITHOUT LOSING UNCRUSHABILITY. Keep in mind the whole purpose of being second on the list is to tank the boss in the event of a MT gib, so don’t put the cart before the horse and stack threat gear only to get savagely abused when it’s your turn to take the beatings. Now the fight is about to start, and the misdirect goes up on the MT.

First, I don’t wait for the assist call. All of the fights in our guild start with a misdirect upon the anointed warrior or feral tank. Unless the tank disconnects mid pull, you are not going to be able to pull threat. The hunters will dump a good 4K threat on them right off the bat. My opening sequence is low risk, and I need the head start. The DPS will start on the assist call. If you need to be ahead of the DPS, you start before them.

As I'm running up to the boss, I judge crusader on them and queue up Seal of Vengeance. I am a huge fan of Seal of Vengeance for off-tanking (and in general, actually), as it allows you to maintain threat even when repositioning, getting knocked back, and so forth. Righteousness can be harder to use for off tanking at this level because your mana flow is going to be dramatically reduced, but Judgement of Righteousness out performs Judgment of Vengeance when you reach about 800 spell damage. Depending on the mob, it may take you a while to figure out where is the best place to stand to make sure you’re actually hitting. I have found that a good trick is to go stand inside of a hunter pet—the AI will position the pet automatically behind the mob, which is where you want to be if at all possible. The in-fight positioning is the hardest thing about off tanking, IMO. The MT may move the mob around, and you might not realize that you’re not hitting, or consecrate is not ticking, until a few seconds, losing threat parity.

What I do next depends on the fight. For Gruul, it may be inadvisable to pop wings right away, as that first shatter can come sooner than planned. For Voidreaver, make sure that consecrate and judgement are off cooldown. If at all possible, I wait until you have a 5 stack of Holy Vengeance built up (Class Timers is a great mod for using with Seal of Vengeance). Now pop wings and unload. Ideally, you want to Consecrate, wings, Judge Vengeance, Reseal Vengeance, renew the 5 stack, shield toss, consecrate, judge and reseal Vengeance, renew the stack, consecrate, and judge again. Your goal is 3 max rank consecrates and 3 judgements in 30 seconds, which is why you have to cheat a little bit and start consecrate first. Since 2.3.2 we don’t get the benefit from having wings up at the start, so it makes more sense to wait for a 5 stack before unloading to get the most benefit from your cooldowns.

So now I'm about a minute into the fight and nearly out of mana. Take a mana pot now. If there is any environmental splash damage around, I start looking for some to draw some healing for some extra mana regeneration. Depending on where I am on the meter and the rate at which my blue rage bar is depleting, I might be able to judge wisdom on the boss and then reseal with vengeance again for some decent mana returns. I was actually able to take agro with Wisdom on Voidreaver, so the mana returns might make it worthwhile.

At this point in the fight, it’s all about cooldown and mana management. I switch to rank 4 consecrates and Judgements of Vengeance whenever they are up. Time your next wings for when you have at least 50-60% mana, as there’s nothing worse than popping wings and running out of mana with time left on the clock.

YOUR SHIELD


As you climb on the threat list, start working rank 1 Holy Shield into your rotation. Omen is a good predictor of agro, but when you get threat there can be a lag between when you start getting beaten on, and when the healers recognize that you are getting beaten. Don’t get crushed. Using this technique I was able to come from behind and take threat multiple times on Voidreaver, despite not receiving a single misdirect and having judgement of Wisdom on the target. Oh, and I have a Rep Reward Blue weapon.

YOUR WEAPON

As far as weapons go I admit I have been remiss in upgrading. Prior to 2.3, there was no real need for me to upgrade—DPS was not being capped, so status quo was fine. After 2.3 came out, I was convinced that I would run Zul Aman twice a week to get the Punisher. That didn’t happen, despite my efforts to the contrary. Then I ran Alterac Valley non-stop to push for the Season 1 mace. As of last week I had enough honor to get the mace, and I realized that I was approximately 1 week away from enough arena points to get the Season 2, so I spent the honor on the wonderful Medallion of the Alliance. So I passed on the Season 1, but my calculations came up slightly off, and as it turns out I’m really 2 weeks away. Next week I get to make the warriors cry in earnest. I already have more health than any other plate wearer in the guild, and equivalent armor. I am now going to improve my overall threat by about 40% just by upgrading my weapon.

Now get out there and make those warriors respec Arms! :D

Edit 1/31: added WWS screen shots.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Angry Waving of Fists

So last night I cleared enough Arena Points to get my Merciless Gladiator's Gavel, and I log in this morning to find that maintenance is in process. NO MACE MAKE TANK ANGRY. TANK SMASH!

Edit: I am a sad panda. My points calculator mods were inaccurate, and I am a measly 250 points away. S2 shall elude me another week.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Official Denial

Blue has weighed in on the supposedly leaked patch notes:

We have information in the works, but I'd caution people that it's not going to be today or even Monday, but we have plans and are working to put things together that will hopefully make the wait worthwhile.

I'd also caution people about getting their expectations up in regard to "sweeping class changes". Again, we have many things in the works and a definite plan of action that we will share with you all more as we progress.

As always, I'll remind people that if we don't post patch notes, they aren't the real deal. We create them, we post them, we make them reality. Don't supplant someone's fantasy patch notes for the real ones in your heads. It will only end in tears on so many fronts.


Too bad, really. Of course, if you really want to wrangle, you could argue that he's really not saying anything. All he said was that the notes are not the "real deal", which could easily mean they're not official, versus not true. He's not explicitly stating that changes referenced are not true. I don't really have a horse in this race, but it's always fun to speculate.

In other news I went to Zul Aman last night with a guild pick up group. The trash on the Bear boss gave us a challenge, and we cleared the gauntlet 3 times to the Eagle boss, without a kill. We had a mix of first timers and vets, and it's always worthwhile to get people exposure to new content for them, even if I net a 60G loss for the night.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Leaked 2.4 Changes and Paladins

World of Raids has a post up containing some allegedly leaked patch notes. I enjoy looking at the notes, and even if they're fake, I am easily amused. Let's see what's probably not in store for my favorite class.
Paladins
- Holy Shock: The cooldown has been reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec and the amount of damage and healing done has been slightly increased.
- Avenger's Shield: The cast time has been reduced to 0.5 sec, down from 1 sec.
- Crusade: This talent now increases your spell damage and healing by 25/50% of your Strength.
- Sanctity Aura now increases all damage done by party members by 4%, but the Holy spell damage bonus has been removed.
- Improved Sanctity Aura has been removed.
- Sanctified Reach (New Retribution Talent): Increases the range of your Judgement and Hammer of Justice spells by 25/50% and the range of your Hammer of Wrath and Repentance spells by 10/20%.

When a +damage coefficient was added to healing gear, the Gladiator's aegis sets became largely obsolete (not that you can PVP as Prot anyway... or can you... another post for another day). Is this a slight nod in the direction of the shockadin crowd? And can we put Holy Shock in the Protection Tree? I'll give you stoicism and Improved Concentration Aura in exchange.

Halving the cast time on Avenger's shield is a nice touch. First, it helps with beating quick-draw mages to their polymorphs, thus invariably protecting their squishy arses. It's now slightly more viable while tanking, making it easier to weave into a threat rotation whenever the cooldown is up. Now if they would just lower the cooldown... :D

Crusade: This is the most interesting talent change. According to Gankbang, the top US Ret pally has about 800 or so strength and is rocking the T6 with Hyjal gems. So at the highest level, we're really only talking about 400 or so spell damage, which is fairly low, and will really only apply to Consecrate and Seal of Command. On the other hand, it's effectively free damage that makes sense, given the new direction of Retribution. Definitely intriguing. It would also be helpful for low-level tankadins to take, given the overall lack of spell damage on low-level plate gear and the tendency to wear warrior gear anyway. It would also make future itemization easier for Blizzard, as they could just start focusing on Strength for Paladins. Upper level tankadins could also go this route and wear as much warrior gear as they could, counting on this talent to provide the spell damage buff necessary to support Righteous Fury.

Changes to Sanctity Aura would also make sense, given the rebalancing of the Ret tree. As for the "reach" talent, it would help somewhat with the frustrating kiteability of Paladins in PvP.

As to the authenticity of the notes... they are fairly comprehensive, and the paladin changes make sense from a game designer standpoint, even if they do require us to rethink certain assumptions. In the end, real or not, it's fun to take a step back and play the "what if" game. Sure, I too, will believe it when I see it in blue, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to daydream a bit.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Leo Down!


What a roller-coaster night of raiding. We had 4 tries on Hydross, failing on a tank disconnect, 2 threshold crossings, and one time where there was a threshold crossing, 8 adds, and the raid took off to reset the event. Meanwhile, the Guild Leader and Main Tank, Daigan, was still fighting as Hydross was at about 10%.

"Guys, did I call for a reset?"

Crap.

On the fifth try, we get our act together and burn him down in about 5 minutes, which was our best time ever.

A fairly uneventful clear to Leo, at least until we get to his cave. We start wiping. Repeatedly. I had 10 deaths for the night-- 6 on Hydross (soul stoned 3 times) and 4 on the trash on the way to Leo. I think the consensus was just sloppy execution all around, particularly on crowd control. We finally clear the trash and are staring at Leo. At this point it's almost 12 on the East Coast and we all know this will be our last attempt for the night.

"Flask up."

Really? For one try? Well, it's an Ildari flask, so might as well-- the guild gave it to me, I use it at the guild's command. And then, everything clicked. DPS was spot on, healing was spot on, and all of the tanks were doing their best to keep Leo off the raid. 9 minutes and 37 seconds later, we had our first kill. 2 pally glove tokens dropped, and were won by our rogue and shaman. The Fang dropped as well, and our Warlock tank blew his DKP load to win the blade. Sadly, I was not even that interested-- I am about 1000 honor away from the season 1 mace, and maybe 2 weeks away from the S2, which is clearly an upgrade.

I am very proud of our guild. We had an atrocious night leading up to it, and we have only had 3 non-consecutive nights of working on him. That we were able to kill him after such a poor night is really a testament to the amount of talent present. Now if we can just focus a little more, we can increase our quality. We are a casual raiding guild. We raid 3 nights a week. We do not min/max our signups, it tends to be first come, first serve. So we're never really sure what we're going to have coming in. But we got the job done.

Looking at my personal performance, I noticed a few things. First, I felt on a few occasions that I was not able to keep up with the DPS, threat wise. Unfortunately, I am still using the continuum blade. I have been debating whether or not to get the S1 gavel, and then the S2 gavel a week later. I think that might be a huge waste of honor, when I could just get the trinket, but our DPS has really amped up their performance. The third option might be to just pass on another few raids until I can get the S2. I could then buy the Battlemaster's Audacity to bump my threat and give me a mini-last stand effect.

Another issue, looking at the WWS parse for the Leo kill, is the impact that Seal of Vengeance had on the fight. Despite the dot missing 10% of the time, and the Judgement missing a whopping 26%, these two abilities still accounted for significantly more damage than consecrate. Boosting spell hit here would help dramatically. The heroic badge rewards are loaded with spell hit, and I wasn't wearing most of them, instead opting for 4 piece T4. I think this actually boosts the priority for the new belt, versus the legs.

Finally, I have been slacking overall on my heroics. I have been attempting to spend more time in AV, farming honor for the S1 mace, and turning down heroic invites. Now as close as I am to S2, I might have better spent my time getting badges to improve my overall gear level.

The takeaway for a broader audience on this is probably just to focus on getting that S2 weapon and just plug away, week after week, until you can get it. That gradual process will allow you to maintain a sizable threat lead on your DPS while clearing your mind and allowing you to focus on whatever other areas of weakness you may have.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Personal choices can be wrong

Chris Jahosky on WowInsider has a build shop article highlighting a really atrocious 0/46/15 build. Here is the build:

Protection (46 points)

5/5 Redoubt
3/3 Precision
2/2 Guardian's Favor
5/5 Toughness
1/1 Blessing of Kings
3/3 Improved Righteous Fury
3/3 Shield Specialization
2/2 Spell Warding
1/1 Blessing of Sanctuary
2/2 Sacred Duty
5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization
2/2 Improved Holy Shield
1/1 Holy Shield
5/5 Ardent Defender
5/5 Combat Expertise
1/1 Avenger's Shield

Retribution (15 points)

5/5 Benediction
5/5 Deflection
3/3 Vindication
2/3 Pursuit of Justice


I'll give you a moment to digest that.

BAD BLOGGER! NO BISCUIT!


Some of his explanations directly conflict with what he is trying to accomplish. I am going to quote liberally from the article and the comments thread-- all block quotes are his words unless indicated otherwise.

The most scandalous suggestion I'm making in this build is not picking up Reckoning, but I have a few reasons why -- read on to find out.


No, actually that is fairly well accepted in the Tankadin community. Vindication is probably the most scandalous suggestion.

Guardian's Favor - Reduces the cooldown of BoP by 2 minutes, and increases the duration of BoF by 4 seconds. Sometimes a mob gets loose and goes straight for a healer or other squishy -- this can be used to give you time to re-establish aggro without danger to the squishy (provided that they're not getting spells cast at them).


The number of situations where this is useful in PvE are almost precisely zero. Let's say a mob breaks loose and does, indeed head straight for your mage. Taunt! Oh crap, taunt resisted, BoP the mage. Yay mage is safe, healer gets pwned. Taunt and BoP are still on cooldown... um, Judgement of Righteousness! Crap, it's on cooldown because I neglected to take the two points to improve it. Avenging Shield! Crap, only 15 seconds into the fight and I pulled with it. Healer dies, the mage is tanking, and your PuG is in trouble.

The only situation where I have ever thought to myself "Gee, I wish I had Guardian's Favor" in a PvE setting is on Moroes to help out with Garotte, and even then my priest gets the first one reserved for them. That's it. One fight, which most people tend to outgear fairly rapidly. I'm sorry, as a protection pally I have to be ruthless when it comes to spending talent points-- so many of my choices are spoken for already.

Toughness - Increases armor from items by 10%. This one is a toss-up. Some paladins like having this and anticipation, some like one or the other. I like Toughness since my Prot Paladin is already at 490 defense, but your mileage may vary.


Anticipation is MANDATORY. This is non-negotiable. Once you reach the 490 defense cap, you can start taking out your defense trinkets and putting in more useful ones, like stamina, avoidance, or even threat if you feel like it. Even if you never make it to SSC and the resist fights there, the flexibility in gear selection this talent gives you is justification for "mandatory" status.

Vindication - It's up to you how to spend these last 5 points, but I like putting 3 of them in Vindication to decrease the target's stats by 15%. It may not work on bosses, but it's pretty good for trash.


You know what else is pretty good on trash? DPS. We do not spec for trash, ladies and gentlemen-- that's why it's called Trash. We spec for bosses. Those 3 points alone are the entire reason for this commentary. This is a PvP talent, plain and simple. Take it if you want to PvP (poorly), but don't attempt to justify this choice behind the old "good for trash" arguement. You know what else is good for trash? Tanking without pants. Solves all of your mana problems and impresses the ladies. Oh yeah, you know what I'm talking about, baby. No that's not a Merciless Gladiator's Gavel in my pocket, 'cause I got no pockets. Ka-chow!

FALLACY OF OPINION

There are people in this world who attempt to justify poorly reasoned beliefs by saying "It's my opinion, so it cannot be wrong." This is false. If your belief (which is a strongly held opinion) contradicts reality, it is wrong. If your opinion does not even support the premise that you were incorrectly attempting to justify with its use, it is wrong. This build is wrong.

"There is no perfect build, every build has its use."

I challenge you to describe to me a tanking situation where this build would excel.

It fails as a 5 man build - you want to stack spell damage for PuGs, for which you need Anticipation.

It fails as an Off Tank spec - Improved Seal of the Crusader beats the pants off Vindication for raid utility.

It fails as a Main Tank spec - You want improved Judgement to maximize threat, particularly if you favor Seal of Vengeance, and of course Vindication is useless.

It fails as a PvP build - Not picking up Seal of the Crusader, or Stoicism, or even maxing out Pursuit of Justice.

In short, the build accomplishes nothing that a tankadin would want to accomplish. Other than, perhaps, providing grist for a hastily written article to meet a deadline.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

What Not to Wear- Tankadin Edition

Well I was planning on talking about Loot, but I Tivo'd this great episode of my most favorite program, What Not to Wear.

What Not To Wear - Tankadin Edition

I’m Coristad McStacy-Clinton, and welcome to What Not to Wear – Tankadin edition, the show where we take Paladins who are still dressing like noobs and give them a FABULOUS makeover, courtesy of Warcrafter.Net. Unlike our sister show, we don’t have a $5000 Visa™ card for people to go shopping with, but we do have URLs! Now let’s meet our first fashion victim.

Meet Bradford. Bradford is a level 70 Protection-spec Paladin and an up-and-coming member of the Watchmen Tanking Team. Unfortunately, Bradford’s professional wardrobe is not quite up to the job, and his talent selection still screams “I’m a new level 70 ROFLMAOBBQ!!1!”. I’m going to help Bradford dress for success.

SPEC

As it turns out, attitude ISN’T everything—talent(s) count, too. Bradford has some points that could be reallocated to give him a little more bang for his tanking buck. First, Improved Devotion Aura has GOT to go. This is a poor choice for a Tankadin as the armor bonus is flat and does not scale. The real reason why this is a poor choice, however, is that the talent we really want is Shield Specialization, and to get there we have to go through Redoubt. It’s not that Redoubt is a bad talent, it just gets less useful as you get better gear. Anything that requires you to be hit to proc is going to suffer this problem. It will still have a reasonable proc rate, and when it does proc your healers will thank you. So Bradford, the first thing is to take the 5 points and move them over from Improved Devotion Aura and in to Redoubt.

Shield Spec is a 30% buff to Block value. This is crucial for two key reasons. First, it scales with gear. As you get better shields, you block proportionally more incoming damage. The second reason is that, first and foremost, a tankadin is expected to hold down as many mobs as their health will allow, and the key to doing that is effective blocking. So we need 3 points from somewhere. The rest of the spec is solid, and the Prot tree is pretty bloated, so pulling those points from somewhere is tough. The simplest answer is to drop Reckoning.

We all love Reckoning, and it’s a fine talent, but there’s not room for it in a Raid tanking spec. Now that Combat Expertise is required, Reckoning falls victim to not having enough points to go around. The good news is that you won’t miss it—you are hitting more because of the Expertise changes, and so your threat is actually quite solid. Burst threat that you cannot control is not going to help you in a raid situation. Drop reckoning and put 3 points into Shield Spec. Now you have 2 leftover points.

The most optimal choice is to drop those points into Precision. Not only are you getting +3% melee hit, which affects Taunt and Avenging Shield, but +3% spell hit, which affects Judgments and Seals. 3 points is effectively giving you +6% to hit—you are not going to find a better value for 2 points. You could potentially put them in to Spell Warding, which is a viable choice, but most tankadins just opt to stack stamina to give the healers more breathing room, rather than attempt to mitigate a small amount of spell damage.

GEAR


Now that talents are in order, let’s talk about Gear. A well-dressed Tankadin is looking for 3 things in a boss gear set: Uncrushability, Stamina, and Spell Damage, in that order. There are fights that will favor Spell Damage over Stamina (Void Reaver, for example), but no matter what, if it’s level 73 it’s going to crush you (with a few exceptions). Warcrafter does not take into account the 5.33% block from the Libram of Repentence, so the real number that we’re going for to reach uncrushable is 102.4 (Dodge+Parry+Block+Miss required against a L73 mob) – 30 (Holy Shield) – 5.33 (Libram of Repentence) = 67.07. Right now, Bradford is showing 66.55, leaving a difference of 0.52%. The good news is that Bradford is only one gem or enchant away from uncrushability, which means we can get to the fun stuff quickly- stacking Stamina. Let’s take a look at Bradford’s closet and see what fashion rules he had broken.

First, Bradford has too much defense. A tank only needs 490 Defense to avoid a critical hit from a level 73 mob. Bradford has 526- that is a lot of wasted defense. The next fashion faux-pax is too much attention is being paid to socket bonuses. By and large, none of the socket bonuses are worth the trade off in Stamina. There are some exceptions, but generally speaking, Blue is the new Black: It goes with everything.

Second, some of the pieces are just inappropriate for Brad’s place in life right now. The biggest immediate change Bradford can do is to get very friendly with the Dragons in the Caverns of Time and grab himself a nice pair of their Timewarden Legs. They have less armor and less defense, but much more Stamina and Dodge, both of which are sorely needed.

The Slikk’s Cloak is very “In” right now, but the accessorizing is all wrong. Agility is not a Paladin stat, and you get more pure avoidance from the Dodge Enchant.

The single biggest change that Bradford could get that would get him well over the avoidance cap is picking up the Faceguard of Determination. This is one of the best avoidance pieces in the game, and for only 50 Heroic Badges it’s a bargain. If we add this piece we get to 68.89 Avoidance, which is actually over what we need. That means… more Stamina! Time to take out the remaining Parry gems (which are really not for us, either—again you get more pure avoidance from Dodge)


Here’s what Bradford looks like fully-dressed:

http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/18535




Presto, an uncrushable, high Stamina tank that is ready to hold down the room with his charm, good looks, and a well placed Consecration. So there you have it! Tune in next week when we talk about how to dress for Serpent Shrine Cavern.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Rethinking Loot?

Egopriest has a great post today from guest-author, EgoTank. It's worth the read yourself, but the gist is that he favors a merit-based loot system, largely based on his self-described merits. Whether his claims are true or not, they are thought-provoking. We're not going to dissect the article, but we are going to talk about loot distribution systems in general over the next four posts.

Part 1: What makes a good loot system? (Thursday)
Part 2: Merit-based systems (Tuesday 1/22)
Part 3: Luck-based systems (Thursday 1/24)
Part 4: Other systems (Tuesday 1/29).

Thursday, January 10, 2008

LOLFIRST!!1!

Everyone has to start somewhere.

I started playing World of Warcraft in January of 2006. In February of 2006, I was lucky enough to join the Watchmen, the finest guild on Kul Tiras. I started, as we all did, without the slightest clue on how to do anything, really. I love to learn, though, and so I read. Everything. Even the bad stuff.

It took me several months, but I finally leveled to 60 and started raiding Molten Core with the guild. I got my Aurastone Hammer, which was absolutely the sign that you had "made it" as a paladin. Aside from a brief stint as a reckbomber in the 40s, I was holy for most of my career.

Patch 2.0, we're doing BWL. I grind out 2 epic PvP pieces in Alterac Valley as a Ret Pally. 6 second Crusader Strikes plus bubbles = GG.

Burning Crusade. I respec to holy/prot and start levelling. Turns out, hitting things with a hammer is a lot of fun. Ding, 61. What the hell, I'll level to 70 as Protection.

Today. 15K unbuffed health. Finally accepted as a "real tank" by my peers. Success is sweet, but short lived. You are only as good as your last raid, amiright?

Hang on kids, the ride is just getting started.