Badge Reward Epics: Do Not Want!

So, information is starting to come out regarding the 2.4 patch. We already knew about the new 5- and 25-man instances we were getting. We had heard there was going to be a new legendary bow (Seriously though, blizzard, whats with the utter lack of legendaries in Outland?). And now, the floodgates are opening, and we're getting all sorts of information on specifics, Sunwell opening quests, class changes, 8-piece extensions on T6, Tier 6 quality badge rewards. . .

T6 badge rewards? Pardon me while I die a little inside. . . thats just not right.

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Now, first off, let me get one thing out in the open here. I could care less about what Joe Schmoe of Kokomo has for gear. People used to get all upset because they couldn't get epics in what has come to be called Vanilla WoW without either raiding with 39 of their closest friends, or PvPing for 30 hours a day to climb the ladder. Blizzard listened, and gave more casual players avenues for acquiring epic gear: heroic instances, badge rewards, crafted epics, a completely revamped PvP point system, and arena. Lets face it, in the Outland, purple is the new blue. But whatever, color is color.

Fast forward to 2.3. Among the changes to the game are new badge rewards, equivalent to the gear that drops in The Eye and Serpentshrine Cavern. Honestly, I probably would have had the same issue with this that I do with the upcoming badge rewards, being much higher quality (T5) than what the content one runs to get it would dictate (Karazhan and Heroic Instances). At the time, though, I was distracted by the fact that two pieces of new badge gear would effectively "plug" two gaping holes in feral tank itemization: Bracers and Idol.

So, what do I care, anyhow? I already said I dont care what other people are wearing, and this new gear doesn't hurt anybody in any way, only gives us new opportunities. Well, first of all, I consider each piece of my gear to be a mark of accomplishment. I wear my T4 Helm with pride, knowing that I earned it by being there for my guild's first ever Prince Malchezaar kill. A'dal's Signet of Defense sits proudly on my finger as a testament to my guild's first slaying of the pit lord Magtheridon, shutting down the source of the Fel Orc menace. My Waistguard of the Great Beast, on the other hand, is simply evidence that I found the time to farm Karazhan for badges for a few weeks. Whoopy doo.

Which brings me to my second reason: expectation. I know that right now, my gear is in great shape for tanking. In fact, other than my T4 chest (which I may never get to see, since I've only been able to attend that one Mags raid due to my schedule), I really dont have any upgrades to look forward to in the forseeable future. So you would think that I'd love to have new gear to work toward in 2.4, right? Wrong. Guess what, its NOT about the gear for me, thats not why I raid. I raid because I love the CHALLENGE of it, not the purple color of my gear text (which, as I already noted, can be gotten by pretty much anybody nowadays). Farming heroics and Karazhan for badges of justice is NOT a challenge to me, and it frankly pisses me off that I now will be expected to continue farming these places to replace my hard earned raid drops with better pieces that even somebody who can only run Heroic Slave Pens and Underbog can get.

Ok, so maybe I DO care about what other people are wearing, just a little bit *shrug*

Third, lets look at an interesting fact: casual content (Which I define as 5-man instances and Karazhan) can be done just fine with casual gear (Which I define as anything that does not come from a raid instance, raid reputation reward, or badge reward other than those TBC released with). The only people that need T5 and T6 quality items are guilds DOING T5 and T6 difficulty content. Quite frankly, having high-quality gear takes all the challenge out of the casual content anyhow. I tank most heroic runs and much of Karazhan in my kitty DPS gear just to make them go faster, for God's sake, I dont need full T6 to run Heroic Underbog! If people are having a hard time doing content without uber gear, thats GREAT, that gives them a challenge, something to work toward. Kind of like how raiders have to work hard to down new bosses, fancy that! And if they really, truly, want to do the equivalent of cheating by acquiring gear beyond what the instance was designed around, go ahead and farm honor/arena points and buy PvP rewards (My disgust for the fact that I should also force myself to do arena since my S3 gear is worlds better than my current raiding epics is another topic altogether.

I've heard some people put forward the thought that this gear can allow people to "catch up" to guilds raiding higher end content. And to a degree, they're right. A person will be able to farm badges and get T5/T6 quality gear to catch up with those who have loot from SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT. There are two problems with this line of thinking, though, which can be summed up in one of my very abbreviated philosophies: Skill > Spec >> Gear. Sure, you can get BT quality gear from badges, but when you really look closely at the difference between T4 and T6 gear, the difference isn't THAT great. A person in full Karazhan and Heroic gear isn't going to be topping the charts on Illidan, but I bet that if they had a decent amount of skill to back up that gear, they would make at least a respectable showing.

And more importantly, even if a level 70 could farm heroics for a full set of BT quality epics, I gurantee you that person, unless they have another raiding character of the same class and spec, is going to be extremely lacking in the skills you need for high end raiding. Whether you realize it or not, you learn valuable raiding skills while killing off Curator's sparks, clicking on Magtheridon's cubes, and dodging Void Reaver's balls *chortle*. Guilds dont take weeks learning a new boss because they're waiting to get enough gear upgrades, they take weeks because they need to learn the ins and outs of the fight, develop strategies, hone reflexes, and generally get better at the game.

If I had to sum up why I dont like the idea of T6 badge rewards in one short sentence, it would be this: Putting high-end raid quality rewards in G'erasMart helps least those who need the items the most, and helps most those who dont even need the items. Continue reading 'Badge Reward Epics: Do Not Want!'

Guildies Say the Darndest Things! (Potentially NSFW Text Behind the Cut)

It sounds funny, but I think one of the biggest things that draws new folks to Prophecy is our Ventrilo server and guild/offcolor chats. Or, I suppose to be more general, our twisted personalities. Rare is the day when there aren't at least a few dozen statements made that are immediately (if not explicitly) twisted to be sexual in nature, another dozen jokes of the toilet humor variety made, etcetera. We can all be very mature if we need to be, mind you, but we have a lot of fun just being immature (I think we have MAYBE 3 members under the age of 18, mind you, and those 3 are rarely around, so dont think we're exposing young kids to things they shouldn't be exposed to).

And with that in mind, I want to expose everybody to excerpts from this very culture, via our own guild forum's "Prophecy Quotes" thread. Names and . . . well, names, have been changed to protect the guilty. Be warned, some of what is behind the cut is not the sort of thing you want your boss to catch you reading, though (Hence why I'm using a cut from day 1 this time). Heck, some of these quotes aren't even appropriate for human consumption. I wont fault you if you don't read this, but I needed some cheering up, and the Prophecy Quotes thread never fails to get me laughing. You've been warned. . .

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As you're reading these, I encourage you to do so with your dirtiest mindset. Remember, we pretty much live in the gutter, so much of this might only be funny if you're actively expecting innuendo. And toward the end, some of this gets REALLY bad, to the point where I'm actually refusing to post some of my favorites because they just go too far, or touch on touchy subjects like religion. Oh, and I copy full posts here, these aren't all posted by me, so any "I" appearing in them is not necessarily about me:

"Wait, what?... OH, SHIT!" -Our raiding motto. :3

*giggles* I have two mages to beat off o.O
-- Hunter, discussing T4 Helm looting competition

"you just follow the directions on the box. its pretty much bake and spank"
-Warrior, making brownies. i died laughing

"I dont even ask for it, I just shove it in your face"
~Shaman, about Mana oil on his mace

"This is ridicufuckulous."
~Paladin

"I blew all of them!"
~Hunter, referring to her cooldowns

"Whoo! I'm a Kentucky fried ROCKET!"
~Rogue Engineer, after becoming a chicken from a malfunction and hitting sprint.

"Once I have it in my mouth, I'm sure it'll be amazing."
~Shadow Priest

Warrior: You said you were gonna come on [Paladin]!
[Paladin]: I DID come on [Paladin]!

I taste Daddy!
- Shadow Priest or Moonkin (not sure which)

"That's like...masturbating as a quadraplegic."
~Paladin, questioning Warrior's sanity by farming as a prot warrior

"I'd be an Actual Teacher. I just like kids too much."
-Shaman, after coming back into vent after a hiatus.

"I just passed another nethergas cloud" ~ Warrior

"Prince Malchezzar doesn't have the balls to drop. Good to know." -Me, as Kirari
"He's wearing an awfully short skirt." -Rogue
"I think he's going to the disco after this." -Mage
"Disco Infernal?" -Kirari

"Keep talking" - Shadow Priest
"Cixah's fapping" - Mage
"No.. because if I was [Moonkin] would get an eye full" - Shadow Priest

"What am I going to do with all these cookies and milk now? It's going to go right to my thighs." -Mage
"Great. My pants are now broken." -Rogue
"Looks like you had some milk too." -ToL Druid

Shaman: Your kitty looks like my grandma's kitty
Mage: =)
Surania: . . .
Mage: Wait
Mage: STFU Surania

Rogue: "I'll just put my meat in the guild bank"

Feral Druid, while summoning in birdform:
"Oh cool, I get glowing balls."


So, for those brave enough to actually read all of these, what are some of YOUR favorite quotes from your guildmates?
Continue reading 'Guildies Say the Darndest Things! (Potentially NSFW Text Behind the Cut)'

Playing a Porcupine

One of my WoW-related pastimes that I like to engage in is learning about classes other than my own. Sometimes, I do this while I'm at work, reading forums and other WoW related sites for snippets of good information, buried amongst all the BAD information out there. Over time, though GM has systematically blocked more and more WoW-related sites as time goes on, which both hinders me, and helps me by forcing me to find other avenues of information like Blogs. A side effect of all of this reading is that I really enjoy talking with members of other classes about their own character's game mechanics, to the point where sometimes I even manage to clue them in to something THEY didn't know. And on the rare occasion I do a PuG, I have to fight to keep my mouth shut, because I'm fairly certain I'll be more knowledgeable than about half of the people I'm grouped with on the mechanics of their own class.

Whats my point in all of this? Well, today I'd like to talk about my experiences on my current alt-of-choice, my level 51 Prot paladin, Jasminne. Both to share my experiences, and also to get input into what I might be able to do better.

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First of all, I started Jasminne after I realized that I would probably never play my shadow priest, Tornaq, again. Maybe its just the mid-30s, but no matter how I spec him, playing him just bores me to hell and back. So, since tornaq was going to be my healing alt once I got him to 70, I decided to make another alt to fulfil that purpose, and since shamans didn't (and still dont, particularly, at least in levelling) appeal to me, and I already had a druid, I figured Paladin was a good choice.

Jasminne started her life as a protection paladin. . .kind of. She was actually going to be a healer for a pre-arranged alt group I had set up, and I wanted to get BoK before going down the holy tree, but the group fell through (via people playing outside of group more than they did grouped together), and she was orphaned at level 20. So, at that point she got abandoned for a while, as I really didn't want to solo-level another character at the time.

Eventually, though, I got a second wind. Figuring that Retribution was the DPS spec, I respecced her to ret, picked up Smite's Mighty Hammer, and tore my way through Redridge and Darkshire. And. I. Got. BORED. Seal Crusader, Judge, Seal Command, Auto-attack, loot. Maybe the occasional heal. Recast BoW every 10 minutes so I dont run out of mana. *yawn*. Oh, and "tore my way through" isn't really the best choice of terms, it was fairly slow going, save for the rare occasion when I got a couple SoC procs in on the same mob. I probably would have killed faster overall if I had popped on might, judged command every time I could, and drank every time I went OoM, but I HATE drinking when soloing, with the possible exception of playing my mage, since he makes his own water.

Fortunately, I learned that there was another way, one that was, by many accounts, even better DPS than the DPS spec: Prot Levelling. So I read up on the joys of reckoning procs, three different ways to kill using shield block (Spikes, Holy Shield, BoSanctuary), and, possibly most appealing, the ability to solo easily what other classes often have trouble with (Large groups, like closely packed Murloc groups). I was hooked, and was so bored of Retribution that I actually respecced to Prot at 30, despite not being able to fill out Reckoning until 35, where most guides advised making the switch.

Now, I think if I weren't so excited to try something new, my 30s would have sucked. The first few levels, especially. But three things happen during your thirties that make a prot paladin get really, really good: You fill out Reckoning, you get Seal of Wisdom at 38, and you get Holy Shield at 40 (And plate, though I really didn't see that much difference there). I put special emphasis on Seal of Wisdom . . . that one spell increased my DPS greatly, as it allowed me (as a reluctant drinker) to cast more often, and take on bigger groups, without ever running OoM.

Fast forward to today: I'm 51, and revelling in my porcupine DPS nature. Most of my soloing gear. . . aw, who am I kidding, I only carry soloing gear, is either "of Defense" or "of the Bear" (Irony, much?). I figure that the defense gear both lets me take on larger groups, thus upping my DPS via retribution aura and reckoning, and makes me block and parry more often, increasing my DPS via Holy Shield/Shield Spike/Sanctuary and faster auto-attacks through parry. The bear gear, in turn, gives me a bigger stamina pool to play with, while also increasing the amount of damage I block by a bit (oh, and its the most common modifier on plate at the AH, really the blocked damage was an afterthought). Overall, I think I have something like 60% combined Block/parry/dodge/miss with Holy Shield up, and my blocks mitigate something like 90% of most mobs' damage.

I thrive on gathering groups of 3-5 mobs of around my level and watching them all die to the combined force of my reckoning-empowered sword and the unholy . . . holyness of my shield. Unless I need to take down a single mob alone for some reason, I pretty much just judge and seal wisdom, and use the incoming mana stream to fund my holy shield and consecrate spamming ways. And let me tell you, those mobs die fast: The first kill tends to suffer from me constantly having reckoning refreshed, while the last mob dies, not from my sword, but from the fact that by the time I turn my attention to it, its nearly dead from all of that reflective damage!

I have some questions though, mostly regarding my looming march into Outland at 58:

1: Is it wierd that I only really use Seal of Wisdom, and occasionally Seal of Light? Should I be trying to mix in my other seals, or am I right in figuring that all that extra mana is really helping my DPS more than another seal would?

2: How bad is the transition to Outland going to be? This is going to be my first time bringing a melee character in greens to outland, and I wonder if my mitigation is going to be worth a damn when I start going toe to toe with the beefed up mobs out there.

3: What is your advice on weapons when first entering Outland? I know that Prot pallys heavily favor spelldamage swords, but my options are pretty limited, with the first real option not popping up until the first boss of Slave Pens. Should I make it my priority to pick up one of those crappy spelldamage green swords off of the AH, or should I pick up a decent DPS sword and go with that (maybe springing for the 40 spelldamage enchant on it)? And, if this question wasn't long enough already, can I tank effectively in outland instances even if I dont have a spell damage sword yet?

4: Are there any items I should be sure to pick up BEFORE I go to Outland? Anything I should be sure to pick up as soon as I get there?

And then, the question nobody else can answer for me: Do I really want this character to be a healer when she gets to 70, or do I want to have a paladin tank to play with? Tough choice, indeed. I probably will go ahead and respec, if only because I might be able to con the guild into helping me gear her up so I can bring her on progression raids when we're set on tanks, but short on healers. Though, do I REALLY want to deal with the headache of tracking all of those buffs? . . . Continue reading 'Playing a Porcupine'

Reader Mail. . . Wait, What?!

So, a couple of days ago, I was surprised to find a druid tanking question. . . in my e-mail inbox. And with yesterday's post basically talking about how plate tanks deflate my E-*rhymeswithbean*, on top of the fact that I got nailed with a hefty speeding ticket on my way to work right now (60 in a 35, got pulled over like 5 feet short of the 55 zone sign) what better way to reinflate myself a bit than to brag. . . er, I mean answer my first reader mail. So, on to the question:

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Hello,

I have a question about which weapon to use for tanking. I have recently respecced back to my roots as a tank and am beginning to get all of the gear in order to get my happy behind into Kara with my guild for some raid experience to prep me for WOTLK. I was doing PVP for a little while and earned myself the Gladiator's Maul for solo grinding/questing and I'm curious to get an expert's opinion on whether this is a solid choice for tanking as opposed to something like the Braxxis Staff of Slumber.

I have both, but im conflicted with the choice of which is better. Im sorta partial to using the Gladiator's Maul because of the enormous amount of stats it provides, including Resilience. I know im losing the bonus to armor but that seems to be it. Am i right to assume that 550 armor is worth giving up in exchange for a crapton more AP, Str, and Resil? I can find nothing in the way of blog articles concerning the relationship between specific gear with Resilience compared to +Defense. I know given the high armor and stamina from PVP epic rewards is a nice plus but a better option for tanking than some of the quest/easily obtainable gear from Amanna's Bear gear w/o tanking article? I appreciate any help you can provide in this manner.

Well, first off, lets look at the items in question:

Gladiator's Maul:
+32 Strength
+48 Stamina
Equip: Improves hit rating by 20 (1.27% @ L70).
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 35 (1.59% @ L70).
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 28 (0.71% @ L70).
Equip: Increases attack power by 894 in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear, and Moonkin forms only.

Braxxis Staff of Slumber:
550 Armor
+39 Stamina
Equip: Increases attack power by 292 in Cat, Bear, Dire Bear, and Moonkin forms only.

But remember, we get a 5.5x multiplier on our armor (assuming thick hide), and each point of stamina gives us roughly 10 x 1.25 (Dire Bear) x 1.2 (Heart of the Wild) x 1.03 (Survival of the Fittest) x 1.1 (Kings) = 17 hit points. So to use Braxxis over the Gladiator Maul, we lose lots of threat and 153 hit points, and gain 3025 armor.

And here is where I STOP crunching numbers, because this can be solved, by and large, qualitatively, by asking yourself 2 questions:

1: Are you crit immune without using the Gladiator's Maul?
2: Are you holding aggro off of the DPS, without them having to throttle themselves too much?

If the answer to either of these questions is "No", then use the Maul to tank with. Crit immunity needs to be your priority; if it is not maintained at all times during raid tanking, you pose a very real risk of dying due to burst damage from an unexpected crit/crush or double crit combo. And while the mitigation on the Maul is severely lacking, if your DPSers have to drop their damage output, or worse fail to do so and pull aggro, the extra mitigation on Braxxis wont reduce the damage you take overall, because the boss is going to take longer to die.

If, however, you are crit immune regardless of weapon choice, and your threat is enough to keep the aggro-magnets at bay, use the Staff of Slumber to up your mitigation. Losing 153 HP to gain over 3k armor is an upgrade to survival, no matter how you slice it.

The answer to the second question is likely to change on a fight-by-fight basis, so I'd advise bringing both if you meet crit immunity. For example, on direct DPS fights like Attumen, or most trash, you may need the extra threat of Gladiator to stay ahead. Meanwhile, if you get to Opera and are, say, tanking/kiting the tin man, you're going to want that extra mitigation, and you have plenty of time to build a sizable threat lead before any DPSer so much as touches your mob. And on Netherspite, aggro doesn't even matter! And on some fights, you might want to take advantage of the ability to switch weapons in combat, and use both. Curator is a great example of this: Most of the time, use your mitigation stick, but during evocates, bust out the PvP weapon to lay into him while he's shut down!

My biggest piece of advice, though, is to work on your Cenarion Expedition rep ASAP and pick yourself up a nice, juicy Earthwarden. The mitigation of Braxxis (after factoring in dodge/miss from defense, and less parrys due to expertise), with a large chunk of the extra threat generation and crit reduction of the Maul (a bit less AP overall, and less crits, but more likely to hit overall due to expertise).

Continue reading 'Reader Mail. . . Wait, What?!'

Why I Wish I Couldn't DPS

WARNING: This is a long, whiny rant. The contents of said rant can easily be construed to be anti-prot-tank. I assure you, however, that I have great respect for my plate-wearing compatriots, and do not wish any of them ill will. I'm just jealous.

The relationship between Protection Warriors, Protection Paladins, and Feral Druids is an interesting dynamic. It seems that we all have our little, or not so little, reasons to be jealous of one another: Warriors tend to wish they had more of the AoE threat generation of Druids and Paladins, Druids tend to be jealous of the plate tanks' lack of a cap on their primary defense stats and ability to become crush immune, and Paladins tend to wish they had better mana regeneration while offtanking. But I personally am jealous about something very odd, something you wouldn't even think was a problem. Something that has irritated me for a while, and I'm sure is at least partially rooted in my own guild's culture, which I admittedly was a large part in the creation of.

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I'm jealous of the fact that Plate tanks' specs dont afford them the ability to deal good damage with a simple change of spec. Funny, especially considering all the flack we feral druids caught when the feral tree was "streamlined", and the division between a bear spec and a cat spec was basically reduced to . . . well, nothing at all.

Why in the world would the ability to do damage be considered a disadvantage? Well, essentially, its a watered down version of the Pre-Burning Crusade mindset of "If you have a heal button, you're a healer". Except these days, while feral druids aren't often expected to heal (At least in my guild), we ARE expected to switch to a DPS role whenever we aren't needed as a tank. And we're expected to be pretty good at it, too.

Now, don't misread this. I can do DPS. I can do pretty good DPS, as a matter of fact. I just dont particularly WANT to.

Now, I'm in an awkward position to be making this complaint. My guild loves my tanking. Many DPSers often tell me that, when I'm tanking a run for them, they get to basically ignore the threat meter and go balls-to-the-wall. And many healers have told me that I'm their favorite tank to heal, because its so easy (by which I assume they mean my personal stat balance makes me easy to heal, though I suppose it could also refer to my ability to keep the DPSers from being hit). And I know that, short of the few raid encounters out there that CANT be maintanked by a Druid (Reliquary of Souls, Illidan, etc), my guild wouldn't hesitate for a moment to put me in the main tank spot for any of our raids.

. . . unless our main tank is there. Now, we dont OFFICIALLY have a main tank, but everybody knows that 99% of the time, if this particular warrior is in a raid, he'll be the one on the named boss, and he'll be the one tanking Skull on trash. He's our best geared and best skilled warrior, and has tanked guild first after guild first after guild first for us. And by all means, he certainly deserves the credit he gets for what he does for our guild. But I really envy him, because I could never aspire to have that primo spot due to my class' mechanics.

The heart of the issue is this: Raids need multiple tanks. Two for 10-man raids, and 3-5 for the 25-mans. Bosses, on the other hand, tend to require one primary tank, and maybe a couple of additional tanks to handle odd jobs like picking up adds during Lurker's Submerge or eating Hateful Strikes on Gruul. Every once in a while, the "Extra" tanks get to do a slightly higher profile job, like tanking adds on Maulgar, or tanking Moroes when the main tank gets gouged. And even more rare are the occasions where you actually need two main tanks, like on Bear Boss or Netherspite.

So, because of this discrepancy between trash and bosses in terms of needed tanks, its natural that some will need to step aside and perform other roles on boss fights. And when it comes down to it, Prot Warriors are the worst option for who to pull. Not necessarily because they're the best tanks, but because they're the worst at filling in other roles. Relegating a Protection Warrior to a DPS role is like . . . well, I can't even come up with a good metaphor right now, but the general rule is Prot warriors do horrible DPS. Prot pallys aren't all that good at it, either.

So, the obvious choice becomes for the feral druids to strap on their kitty gear and shred the backside of the boss. After all, not only do bear tanks have a good talent selection for doing DPS, they also have the advantage of having the gear for it, since most druid tanking gear is actually hybrid tank/DPS stuff with strength and agility galore. Faced with the option of having a plate tank doing halfassed DPS while the feral druid tanks, or having the feral druid doing 80-90% of a full-on DPSer's DPS while the plate tank tanks, its pretty obvious which is better in terms of overall success of the encounter.

And even if you DO need the druid to tank on an encounter, often fights involve killing off adds which, once dead, allow the tanks for those adds to switch from a tanking role to a DPS role. Once again, the feral druid ends up relinquishing their tanking role soon, tanking the first or second add to die so that they can be freed up to switch to cat form and do DPS. After all, like I just noted, a feral druid's tanking gear is often 1/2 to 2/3 DPS gear as well, while a paladin or warrior is going to be stuck in tanking-focused gear trying to contribute damage. And again, you want a warrior to be on that last mob to die, because even paladins, while stuck in bad gear for it, can at least equip their healing weapon and shield and contribute that way if healing starts to wane.

So basically, what happens is that warriors, while no longer the only accepted tanking class, maintain the status quo of being the best tanks, but not necessarily because they ARE the best, instead getting the coveted main tank position because they lack the utility and flexibility to perform other roles.

And now, for the part where I futilely call for blizzard to change the mechanics of the game. First of all, make it possible for Prot warriors and Pallys to do decent DPS with their specs. For that matter, let ALL specs of all classes do reasonably good, though not top-notch, damage. And second, do what you did for the healers recently, and make defensive stats on plate gear also somehow boost the ability of the plate wearer to do damage. That way, maybe feral druids like me wont feel so bad about asking to get our share of the limelight every once in a while.

Yeah, go figure, I write a long article detailing how I envy warriors, and then I conclude it by wishing for BUFFS for them. Did I mention I'm insane?

Continue reading 'Why I Wish I Couldn't DPS'

ACLaBT4: The Tab-Lacerate Fallacy, and Tanking as a Non-Feral

Its time for the final installment of A Closer Look at Bear Threat! (Cue cheesy gameshow music and strobe lights). Today, as promised, I will be taking a closer look at threat generation for the Mangle-challenged. The common perception is that nonferal tanks are about as threatening as a little bear cub, time to put that assumption to the test. But I also want to touch on one other topic that I was reminded of when reading some blog comments today, and that is this strange practice some bears engage in of tab-lacerating their offtargets when multi-mob tanking.

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Tab Lacerate. . . Why?

Last week, we established breakpoints where swipe is actually better threat generation than lacerate, and I personally came to realize that I have reached the switch-over point myself. In order to debunk this myth that tab-lacerate is somehow useful, though, we need to look at the scenario swipe is really intended for: Multi-target tanking. And while you would think logic alone would prevail, that a multi target ability would be better for a multi target scenario, we already found that similar logic breaks down in the single target scenario, so lets do this up proper.

First off, lets give every advantage we can to lacerate, by gimping our swipes. Lets assume we have a mere 1100 attack power, 15% crit, 35% mob damage reduction (since off-targets generally dont get debuffs), and for the heck of it, I'm getting rid of our expertise and hit rating, even though that should affect everything evenly. This is about as low-grade as you can get at 70, we're talking Braxxis staff, full heavy clefthoof with stam gems, and crappy greens, basically.

With those numbers, we're looking at threat values of 338 for Lacerate, and 169 for swipe. But thats on a single target, and we're talking about hitting at least 2 targets here, so double the swipe threat and we get . . . 338. Fancy that! So even with abysmally crappy gear, swipe puts out just as much threat per use as lacerate overall. Anything better, or add a third mob, and swipe is a clear winner.

Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but think about it for a second. You dont need to hold off-mobs off of the DPS, because they're killing the main target, not offtargets. If they're not doing that, let 'em die as far as I'm concerned. You just need to be keeping those mobs off the healer. In the worst case scenario, threatwise, you have two mobs on you, and are putting out 169 threat per swipe on the off target. Lets assume one swipe every 2 seconds (3 swipes every 6 in a Mangle->Swipe x3 rotation), so 84 threat/second going into that off mob. For the healer to pull it off of you, they need to do 4 times that amount as healing per second (x2 for the 50% threat modifier on heals, and x2 again due to healing threat being split among the two mobs), or 336 healing/second. With a third mob in there, that goes up to 504 healing/second.

Doesn't sound like a lot, does it? Well, its not for those of us who are used to tanking heroics, raids, and the like, but I feel bad for your group if you have 1100 AP, 15% crit, no hit, and are tanking anything at all challenging. And (this is important), even if swipe spam isn't holding mobs off of your healer, lacerate will NOT solve the problem, because we already did the math and figured out swipe is putting out just as much threat. What will help, however, is tab-Auto-attack, tab-Maul, and/or tab-mangle, while still spamming swipe. That actually puts extra threat into your off targets (at the cost of threat on your main target). For those who find that tab lacerating helps them hold 2-3 mobs at once, I'll all but gurantee the difference is the extra autoattack threat you're hitting them with, NOT lacerate itself.

Threat for Non-Ferals: Why Offspec Druid Tanks Lose Aggro

First off, just let me clarify: I'm not trying to say that non-feral druids CANT tank. Heck, my first time killing High King Maulgar, I was full resto spec, and was one of the tanks on the Warlock. I'm just highlighting why offspecs have such a hard time tanking. All of the mitigation in the world is meaningless if mobs aren't actually beating on the person with the mitigation, and while not having feral tanking talents makes us a little bit squishier, the pain is really felt when we realize that we're a lot less THREATENING without the myriad threat talents in there.

Lets take our baseline feral druid from the calculator. He has all of our feral talents, 2500 AP, and .3 crit. He can crank out 802 threat per second if not using maul at all, and only needs to take 185 damage per second to maintain the rotation. If he is taking at least 1253 DPS, he can go full throttle with Mauls as well, and his threat output shoots up to1069 threat per second.

Now, lets say this druid respecs for PvP. At first, he only drops mangle to pick up Nature's Swiftness. How much can the loss of one talent point hurt? Well, a lot. We change the rotation he uses to nonstop lacerates, and lose the (minimally) boosted threat from lacerate's damage modifier (note that just changing the "Mangle?" box in the calculator to zero automatically zeroes out your mangle damage line, and removes the 1.3x modifier from lacerate's damage). Now, in order to maintain our lacerate spam, we only need to take 149 DPS, but at the same time, our threat generation plummets from 802 TPS down to 593 (A loss of over 25%). If we throw our mauls back in, we need to take 1217 DPS, but our threat generation pops up to 860 (still nearly 20% less threat than before).

Our hypothetical druid realizes that NS does not a PvP healer make, so he respecs to a full PvP resto (8/11/42) build. Now things get a bit trickier. We get to keep Naturalist and Ferocity, but lose the rest of the listed talents (I'm assuming you're taking thick hide here, since threat generation is useless in PvP). In addition to the talents listed, we also lose 6% crit from Sharpened Claws, 105 attack power from Predatory Strikes, and while I'm not going to try to quantify it, you'll also lose some AP and crit from Survival of the Fittest. Now we're down to a measly 492 threat without Maul, and need to take 800 incoming DPS to sustain our lacerates, and if we spam Maul too, we only get up to 721 TPS, and need to take a whopping 1814 DPS to sustain it. Note that at this point, the healer would overtake you on threat if you were taking that much damage, unless they were a paladin.

But lets not stop there. Lets go all the way, and see what a typical moonkin build with absolutely no feral talents could put out threatwise with that same set of gear. Now we drop Naturalist and Ferocity too, and cry a little. Lacerate and autoattack now only give us 467 threat/second, requiring us to take 920 damage/second to even maintain that (While the non-pally healer cranks out 460 threat/second just to heal us through that kind of damage), and if we mix in maul, we only get up to 689 threat/second, and we have to take 2125 damage/second just to get the rage for it!

Two lessons to take away from all of these numbers. First of all, Mangle itself is a HUGE source of threat for feral druids, losing that one poing alone can drop our threat generation by as much as a quarter! Second, and more importantly, a druid who isn't deeply into the feral tree generates CRAP for threat. They could probably pop on some armor and take a hit fairly well, but they can't piss the mobs off enough to be getting hit unless they're the only ones paying attention to a mob (or the DPSers are very careful/bad), and they have a paladin for a healer, most likely, at least if they ever have enough rage to throw any Mauls.

Continue reading 'ACLaBT4: The Tab-Lacerate Fallacy, and Tanking as a Non-Feral'

ACLaBT3: Earthwarden V. Wildfury, and Low-Rage situations

Today, I'm going to look at our two most used endgame tanking staff options, and try to determine whether its possible for the Earthwarden to truly be better than the Wildfury Greatstaff for threat generation. Then I want to shift gears to a very familiar situation for most of us: Low Rage tanking, often experienced when we're either overgeared for an instance, get a lucky string of dodges, or are offtanking an encounter such as Void Reaver or Gruul.

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Earthwarden versus Wildfury:

First off, Wildfury Versus Earthwarden. In terms of overall mitigation, there is little question as to which is better: Wildfury gives us the same armor, coupled with more stamina and dodge, at the cost of some defense and expertise rating. With expertise doing so little for mitigation (one less parry every 67 swings yielding a faster autoattack), the only reason, mitigation-wise, to NOT use the wildfury is if losing the defense on the Earthwarden is needed to stay crit-immune.

The comparison is not so straightforward, however, if you consider threat generation. Wildfury has a whopping 280 more AP than the Earthwarden, but the Earthwarden essentially gives a tank 3% bonus to hit (via a 1.5% reduction in both dodges and parrys). But is it enough to make Earthwarden the better threat stick in any situations?

Well, first off, lets give the earthwarden every advantage we can. Lets say that we're in a zero-rage situation, and thus have to limit ourselves to a simple Mangle->Laceratex3 rotation, with no Mauls, thus maximizing the importance of our lacerates for threat. Lets also say we have 0 crit, and an obscenely high amount of AP: 4000. Assuming we're using Earthwarden, we get a threat generation of 809 TPS. If we add 280 AP, and subtract our the Expertise EW gave us, we end up with. . . 815 TPS. So even under the most absurdly biased circumstances I could come up with, the Wildfury Greatstaff still gives us more threat generation.

Don't vendor that hammer yet, though! There IS one reason to use EW over the Greatstaff, and its threat related. If you need to be absolutely sure that you get some threat on a target as quickly as possible, without an unlucky string of misses, throw on the 'warden, get a few hits on a mob to cement your aggro, then swap back to the Greatstaff. While your average threat goes down, the odds of an unlucky string of misses go way down, too. I still occasionally use my Earthwarden on pulls, and can be great for mid-fight pickups too, like when you need to grab a Hydross add or two.

Offtank Rotations; AKA Low-Rage Situations:

While its fun to look at our threat generation under near-infinite rage conditions, its often not realistic. Maintaining mangles, lacerates, and mauls is hard on our red bar. For our baseline example of a 2500 AP, 30% crit bear tank, we would need a supply of 11.4 rage PER SECOND from incoming damage to maintain all of our attacks at all times. According to Karthis, we get 0.0091 rage per point of incoming damage, so to maintain that threat generation, we need to be taking 1253 damage per second to fund our "infinite" rage cycle.

Now, if you stop and think about it, thats not too unreasonable, at least for 25-man boss fights, and even some of the 10-man fights. At least, not if you're actually taking hits. But what happens when you're the offtank, on fights like Void Reaver or Gruul, and any damage you take is unreliable at best? What happens when you dodge three Hurtful Strikes in a row, and that eternal wellspring of rage dries up?

The short answer is, we have to drop some attacks from our rotation. Most tanks' first reaction is to drop maul from the rotation, and if we look at our rage efficiency numbers, thats the right choice, as it is our most rage-inefficient attack. Dropping Maul from the rotation completely drops the rage we need to get from damage way down, to a meager 1.68 TPS, or about 185 incoming DPS. Even on fights where you truly aren't taking damage, that should be manageable via cave-ins, poundings, whirls, and whatnot. And if it isn't, you may just have to scale back your lacerates a bit to compensate. But never, under ANY circumstance, let yourself be out of rage when a mangle cooldown is up! EVER!

Now, most bears already know this. Never skip a mangle, only maul if you have the rage, blah blah blah. My point is, with the calculator, we can actually predict what our threat output will be under low-rage situations. By dropping Maul completely, we're only losing about 20% of our threat generation. A hefty sum, to be sure, but I'll bet if a warrior made a similar threat calculator, and compared their own infinite-rage rotation to a zero-rage rotation, they'd lose a LOT more. Thats why druids are so valued as offtanks in these situations.

Next time on ACLaBT: Threat generation for non-ferals, or, when spec really CAN be more important than skill. Barring an interesting topic suggestion, this will be the last installment of ACLaBT.
Continue reading 'ACLaBT3: Earthwarden V. Wildfury, and Low-Rage situations'

We Interrupt this Program . . .

So, the next installment of the ACLaBT series isn't going to be going up today. General Disasters. . . er, I mean GM, was keeping me busier than usual today, and I just didn't have the time (nor privacy) to sit down with the threat calculator to play around. On the plus side, I got to put in some time on improving the site itself today, and while I'm rather pleased with the results thus far, I have plenty more I want to try to get done today.

What I've Done:

First of all, with the help of Phaelia at Blog Azeroth, I've implemented cuts on my blog. What are cuts, you might ask? Well . . .

. . . Thats a cut. Just a nice way to condense the front page here. From now on, all you'll see when you first pop over to the Rambling Bear is an introduction to the posts, the actual meat of the articles will be behind links. Less cluttered and all. Oh, and I went back through everything I already posted and did likewise (Remember in school when your english teacher taught you to start every essay with an introduction paragraph? Sometimes it pays to listen to your teachers!).

Second. . . is actually what I did first. Yesterday, I signed up for a feedburner account, and set everything up for people to subscribe to the Rambling Bear as an RSS feed, or even through e-mail. So, while the option to subscribe to the blog was already there, its now in a more prominent location. Subtle hint? Perhaps.

Third, at the urging of the Blog Azeroth community, I have added a copyright notice to the bottom of the site. Can't hurt, eh? I'm not too fond of the appearance of it, though, but I'm too rusty with html/css/schwatever, and wasn't able to get the formatting looking good. I'll get back to it eventually, but honestly, with it hiding at the bottom, its not top priority.

Fourth, I went and adjusted the page widths a bit. The overall page is a bit wider now, and the sidebar is narrower, giving plenty of space for actual posts.

What I've Yet to Do:

First and foremost, I need to fix the images I'm using. Apparently, when blogger "uploads" a web picture, it doesn't actually upload a damn thing, it just hotlinks it off-site. Now that I've noticed this, I need to fix it so all of my images are local copies. Badwidth is bandwidth, and stealing it is bad, even if it's accidental.

Second, I need to figure out how I want to handle my blogroll. Right now, I have a short list of my frequently visited blogs (though even two of THOSE I'm not so sold on any more), and my guildmates' blogs. I want to keep my actual blogroll short, but also want to give a more extensive roll for all of the great blogs that are out there. I just have to figure out how I want to go about doing that, and also have to decide whether to keep my guildmates on the front page, or move them to the expanded roll.

Third, I need a banner. Badly. Unfortunately, my artistic skills are somewhere between 0 and none, at least in the graphic arts. I tried offering my guildies 100g to make a banner, but nobody's bit on that offer. Any suggestions for what to do in it are greatly appreciated. On the plus side, the mrs. does know a thing or two about photoshop, so I can probably get her to make it once I have the concept and some images to work with.

Fourth, I need to get item links working. I've tried to install the "Powered by Wowhead" item links on the site, but every time the script just makes IE toss errors around, even though I follow the instructions exactly.

Fifth, I need to work on the overall layout. While I'm more of a "Function over Style" sort of guy, if I want to build a community of readers, I need to at least have SOME sense of style. And style sheets. Ugh, again with the breaking out the books.

Anyhow, I'll try to get ACLaBT3 up tomorrow. Actually, no trying, I WILL get it up, even if I have to work on it until 3 in the morning to do it (Yes, I know, technically that would mean it didn't go up until Saturday, but timestamps are adjustable *grin*)
Continue reading 'We Interrupt this Program . . .'

ACLaBT2: Swipe vs. Lacerate and the Efficiency of Maul

So, now that we have this fancy calcumalator here, lets get to using it. Today I want to look at two subjects: Swipe vs. Lacerate for single target tanking, and the effectiveness and efficiency of Maul. We'll get to other topics, like the value of hit, expertise rating, and how to use the calculator to make a good offtanking threat rotation, in a future post.

The Surprisingly High Efficiency of Maul

I'm going to start with the second subject first, because it really surprised me when I actually started looking at the numbers. Using the numbers from yesterday, Maul is only about 10% less rage efficient than lacerate, coming in at about 27.2 threat/rage compared to lacerate's 31.4. The lower your AP and crit are, the more rage efficient Maul is, though even if we reduce ourselves to 1500 AP and 20% crit, Maul is only AS efficient as Lacerate. The lesson here is simple: Dont worry TOO much if you Maul one too many times, and because of it miss a lacerate. You're not losing that much threat. . . unless you also miss a mangle, which has an INCREDIBLE amount of rage efficiency!

Now, you might be wondering, how does Maul have negative scaling? Well. . . it actually has no scaling whatsoever (Save for a little bit of scaling with crit, I suppose). The reason Maul's numbers look worse and worse as we get better threat generation stats is actually due to the scaling of autoattack. The better our autoattack damage, the more rage our autoattacks generate. . . and since I'm factoring the loss of an autoattack into Maul's rage cost, Maul actually costs MORE rage the better your gear is.

Swipe Vs. Lacerate: the Breakpoints

Some of you may not realize this, but there comes a point where Swipe actually pulls ahead of lacerate for single-target threat generation. The question is, where does this breakpoint lie. Well, funny thing, its actually pretty simple to extract the data, but it relies on two factors: your crit, and your attack power. I'm going to assume that hit is meaningless here (since both attacks suffer the same miss rate). I'm also discounting the lacerate bleed effect for now, basically assuming we're comparing Mangle->Lacerate x3 to Mangle->Lacerate->Swipe x2, just for ease of calculation. And I'm going to look at 2 values for mob mitigation; 30% because thats what I used as the default in the calculator (And coincidentally, is about what Void Reaver sits at after raid debuffs, that being a very threat-sensitive fight), and 20% (Which will be the new default, based on the research done on boss armor at Elitist Jerks, and assuming full raid debuffs and average armor, more or less). The results, which are also now saved in the calculator, are as follows:

To read this table, just find the row that most closely resembles your Attack power, and the colum that resembles how you want to compare swipe and lacerate (20% or 30% mitigation, Threat/swing or Threat/rage). Where they cross is a crit value. If you have more than that amount of crit, Swipe outperforms lacerate. Less than that amount of crit, and lacerate pulls ahead. So, for example, I figure that, raid buffed, I have about 2600 AP and 35% crit. Looking across the 2600 AP row, I see that, believe it or not, there is only one occasion where swipe DOESN'T outperform lacerate on a single target: Threat/Rage on a target with 30% armor.

What this says to me (and yes, this actually is news to me) is that I need to switch my tanking rotation to more heavily use swipe, except for when I'm tanking on the Lootreaver fight AND am threat limited (Not actually VR's target). Looks like its time to start using that Mangle->Lacerate->Swipe x2 rotation I mentioned earlier!

Tomorrow: Earthwarden Vs. Wildfury Greatstaff, and Offtank Threat Rotations

Continue reading 'ACLaBT2: Swipe vs. Lacerate and the Efficiency of Maul'

A Closer Look at Bear Threat, Part 1

Today's entry is going to be relatively short. Mostly because I've spent most of the last 2 hours creating a threat calculator for our various druid threat attacks, taking into account ALL the variables I could muster. Overall hit rate, crits, bonus threat, talents, heck, the only thing I think I left out was the possibility of having SALVATION on! Well, that, and the possibility of fighting mobs that are lower than level 73, because I dont care about trash *shrug*. Special thanks goes to Karthis; your post on rage generation was a great help, the formulae on wowwiki were just too painful to try to interperet.

First off, here are the numbers that appear in the calculator by default. I assumed a reasonably well geared, raid buffed tank, using an Earthwarden (Note the Expertise rating):


And here is a link to the calculator itself. Simply adjust the green values to suit, and witness the magic!

Tomorrow's post is going to use this calculator to analyze druid threat generation. What fun!

Nonetheless, If you happen to find something I did leave out, or think I might have, say so, I'll get it in there before Part 2 tomorrow. Oh, or any mistakes I may have made (Especially if you happen to have a reliable source with an exact value for swipe scaling).
Continue reading 'A Closer Look at Bear Threat, Part 1'