TankSpot - Blogs - Thist

DPS time!

Thist — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:42:12 GMT

Dusted off my dps set, enchanted and socketed it (cost about 2k total to get it fixed up and add some crafted pieces), found the Fury Guide on tankspot and respecced, glyphed etc according to it. Figured out when and why I could instant slam and got an annoying addon that yells "Perfect!" when its time to slam. And now I'm all ready to dps 25-man Naxx. Unless someone doesn't show, then will tank if needed. Itching to see what dps'ing is like though... Any tips for a first-time Fury?

Malygos and Sartharion

Thist — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:06:21 GMT

So I tanked this encounter yesterday, and we downed it after a few tries, but it really is a bit of a pain, both for warriors and tanks in general.

For warriors - Improved Spell Reflect is simply too good for this encounter for you to not go respec for it, especially when learning it and with only 2 healers and a few lower dps.

For all tanks - You better be able to see things well. Macro /script SetCVar ("cameraDistanceMax",45) and click it, then change it back to 15 (default) afterwards if it starts to bug you when you look like an ant in Dalaran.

Also for all tanks - Whence come the sparks??? A very important question. Try get at least one other zoomed out person to help you look for them, especially for the ones that come from behind you. And calling out "north north!" instead of "spark coming from north" or "run to the north" is not helpful.

Also also for all tanks - Moving the dragon - you need to move the whole dragon quickly, without facing it towards the raid, trying to get it on the other side of the last landed spark so they stack, without dying to blows to your back, and please still generate high threat too.

Deathknights can help move the sparks, but we didn't have one, and previous disastrous attempts with one included him also taunting Malygos, which didn't work out so well.

Now for Sartharion - I was tanking the one drake we left up, the druid tanking Sarth. The fire elementals not being tanked and owning the raid brutally. We have 2 healers and nobody who is remotely able to offtank anything in the raid - no plate wearers, no suitable pets, nothing! Is it possible like that? We gave up and killed the drake, but there must have been a way? One tank tanking both didn't work, we tried that before. Healers can't heal through people having Sarth/drakes faced at them either. How do you do it???

Failing at Hyjal still possible

Thist — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:49:35 GMT

I joined a Hyjal pug thinking that 25 people in mostly purples could not fail. I was so terribly wrong.

Imagine all the things you hate about bad puggers - the naked guy, the guy in greys with a Stoppable Force, the guy hiding behind buildings, healers who never heal, dps that isn't doing any dps, at least five people making genital jokes, a leader trying to explain some impossibly complex and odd loot laws, tons of afks, only about half the people on vent, etc. I'm surprised we had room for them all in a 25-man.

We got 3/5 down, wiping 5 times. It took 4 hours and a lot of my sanity.

I will stick to going to Hyjal, BT and Sunwell with guilds or make pugs with only people I know and their friends. Bad puggers remain bad, even if the content is totally nerfed.

Stage of the invasion event your server is at?

Thist — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:46:15 GMT

On Arthas: the apothecary has set up outside aldor bank and gives you one quest to deliver a sample to your home city. Ziggurats are still around and the zombie circles.

I know some servers are more advanced, and I don't want to miss anything, so whats next?

Random stuff - new job and warrior changes

Thist — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:34:53 GMT

I have a new job :-) Pays a bit less, but the people are great and I am really excited about it. I do also get pre-IPO stock options, which may work out really well, but can never really say for sure.

I have been trying out a new warrior spec, and I am not that impressed at the moment. My threat is good now and it is easier to keep it high, but the damage pallies does is amazing and they are about on par with threat, and the threat druids can churn out against a single target is obscene. So, while I am better threat-wise, another class is much much better. No fair! ;-)

I also noticed that stacking sunders and devastates seems to fail more often, even on low-level targets. I don't have any numbers, but it seems different than before. I read that hunters and rogues can stack similar debuffs and now I am wondering if maybe that would be better since ours aren't the threat they used to be and may be a pain to stack.

I don't like the new button rotations - it does require more watching and interaction, but sometimes it feels very whack-a-mole on anything that isn't on cooldown instead of being slightly organized. I wonder what people think about the random things that just weren't on cooldown that I threw in there.

I like achievements, gives me something to do this week. Anyway, going shopping so that's all for now.

Arthas (the server), I hate you.

Thist — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:12:53 GMT

Server most often down.
Server most often to have instances down.
Server in worst battlegroup.
Laggiest server.
Server with longest queue times.
Server with bgs and arena most often down.
UGH!!!

Arthas was down for as long as 8 hours at a time over the last week, and went down most evenings around raid time. It is getting ridiculous.

Anyone know of a good pvp server with a medium population, nice horde people, and without a lame hamster running it?

Truly dismal DPS

Thist — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:23:10 GMT

Last night I was rather dismayed at my guilds DPS on Archimonde. We kept wiping until the raid was called. It is a fight where DPS is less important than dying, but we usually chip away at his health at a decent rate.

Some attempts I was 6th or 7th in dps, and:
-prot spec
-dps gear is mostly season 3/badge
-keeping commanding shout up, no battle shout in group
-keeping demo shout up
-no windfury
-stamina food
-my battle elixir: Juju power (was farming timbermaw rep)
-terrified of getting doomfire so dodging flames a lot
-getting airbursted a far amount thanks to a large melee group
-standing on one leg (just kidding)

It was like most of the dps was asleep or not trying. On the positive side, the healing was much better and the MT didn't die from not getting heals for long periods so I think the healing problem is fixed.

Also on the plus side, it's harder to sit me for more dps if I am consistently in the top 10 dps as prot ;-)

Mysterious officer stuff

Thist — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:20:54 GMT

This week I was just wondering about the mysterious world of officer decisions - they have to make them, but how much of their reasoning do you think they should share with their guild?

None,
Some,
Lots,
All,
On demand?

What do you do if you are an officer? Or what do your officers do? What do you think is best?

Secretly training people (evil thought of the day)

Thist — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:13:02 GMT

While I was trying to get my friend cleaved while tanking I thought about how evil tanks could help train people to not stand in fire.

For example if you pulled mobs into your group instead of a good place, turned them towards people, took more damage than you need to, etc. You could train them to move out of hazards, heal burst dam (/sit, heh), move while doing things etc.

Maybe us tanks facilitate lazy people who stand in fire and can't heal spike damage, and we could stealthily train them from when they are lowbies if we are cunning and evil :-)

Yay, tanking, and boooo to Archimonde

Thist — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:04:13 GMT

I am in a great new guild and they even let me tank stuff despite having at least 3 tanks (2 warriors and a pally) that outgear me.

So in case you were wondering, you are fine in your badge, ZA and ssc/tk (no kael/vashj loot) for all bosses in Hyjal...EXCEPT Archimonde. You are fine for first 3 of BT too, will let you know about the rest later.

You want at least 20k health and some decent avoidance for Archimonde, unless you add in a couple extra healers or something.

In my best combo of stamina and avoidance gear (with all consumables) I had 17.5k health, the usual MT has 23k and 5% more everything. He tanked on the last (successful) attempt, and I felt a bit bad about the 2 wipes to my sudden deaths.

Things you definitely want to know about Archimonde:
- you know how you often run in through the boss, get into position, grab some nice rage and start generating threat? try that on Archimonde and you will probably die suddenly like I did (it was hilarious apparently). You should thunderclap and shield block as you run in, and be very very careful he doesn't get you from behind. Also run really slowly so you don't leave the healers behind. Shield rune and ironshield pot is also useful, else squishsquish!
- the raid wants him at a certain very specific spot, it's kinda in the middle of the windy path thing below the stumps (you'll know what I mean), its not like other bosses where anywhere close is ok - they all have their favourite/best spots and set groups and are rattled if your positioning is off
- the fear timer is like the one for nightbane, it tells you when he can fear, except it has a very very short cast time, so once he can fear (watch deadly timer) you should save your global cooldown and only heroic strike and shield block until the fear comes, I'm undead so have extra anti-fear, but still managed to mess this up horribly twice (wotf is also on global cooldown)
- don't keep moving out the fire (it looks nearer than it is usually), if you get doomfire and are in the middle of it then call out that you are backing up/sideways a bit, and do it slowly; try to not move around fear time because some of the healers will probably be feared or healing people feared into fire

I have it down now, but I'm not tanking Archimonde again until I have some more health, its just not practical for the raid.

My new guild is very cool and raids at good times for me, so I am having a lot more fun now, more silly tanking tips to follow :-)

Sunwell Trash Farming

Thist — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:22:44 GMT

Tanked this twice over the weekend, and learnt quite a lot because the RL was just "Tank, do your thing!" which was a little tough since I had never set foot into Sunwell before. This is a long guide for something so simple but someone may want to run one or get thrown in and may want to know what to expect.

Raid needs:
- 1 Tank (around t5 level, could maybe get away with less if your healers rock)
- 5-7 healers (depends how good they are)
- 6 mages (or as many as you can get, fill out rest with warlocks, don't try it with less than 4 sheepers, any mage who can sheep will do - but beware of mages with no spell hit who can't mash sheep fast, and warlocks who aren't used to using fear to cc (it ran across 2 rooms, not my fault! <--bad warlock)
- Fill up rest with high dps or extra healers, some people only fill up to 20 so everyone gets more loot, the really leet do 15, I went with a 20 one day and a 25 the other.

What you do:
First kill the Big Robot - you tank him on the stairs facing him away from the raid. Raid groups by party numbers in a row below the stairs. Something like this:

doorway
top stair - you - top stair
stair - big ass robot facing you - stair
-------------melee------------------
-grp1--grp2-------grp3--grp4--------

Strat:
The big robot does chain lightning so you want several small groups of people to avoid it bouncing around. Need to stack exactly on each other. Put a symbol on one person per grp and tell rest to stand on them, plus a symbol for melee. Assign 2-3 raid healers, tell rest to heal tank who will be taking 5-7k blows. It's ok for random people to die here except for the tank, thats kinda normal, tell healers that. This is the hardest part of sunwell trash. Start a timer when he goes down (or chug a flask), you have 2 hrs to farm before he comes back.

Next part:
Now you see 2 groups of trash with 7 mobs each in them. We always kill the one to the right, then kill everything in the left one except the Dragonhawk, run out, let it reset and run back in. Give each of the mages (or warlocks) a symbol and raid assist, tell them to mark up their sheep target as soon as they are ready. Tank marks their target with a skull. If you have a hunter then hunter mds skull to tank, everything else is cc and killed one at a time.

More detail for first pull (right group):
Pull them back into the first room to avoid fear/cc accidents. Tell ppl to not cc until they are away from the second group, plus healers to heal tank a lot to start.

Here are the possible trash mobs:
*Vindicator - marked with skull, killed him first each time, he cleaves but is disarmable
*Slayer - hunter-type mob, can be disarmed, scattershots sometimes, I always killed it second
*Cabalist - caster, sheep rather than fear, can't be interrupted, just casts on tank so easy
*Arch mage - caster, can be interrupted but no cast times so it's based on luck, iceblocks then ports around then heads back at tank, annoying!
*Dawn priest - caster, does nasty aoe but can be interrupted
*Dusk priest - this nasty guy fears so tremor totems, stance dance, he also slows
*Dragonhawk - can be slept, mob left so entire pull respawns, doesn't drop loot

And I almost forgot the imps!
Random Imps - soloable, but need to be killed, stop dps on tank target, kill them, resume dps on tank target. They don't need to be tanked.

I listed the mobs above in the order I broke cc and killed them, but you can just break nearest, or fears if you want. I think it's quicker to kill the easy ones first, then annoying arch mages, then the priest that aoes last so low people can just move away and start heading out for reset in case it isn't interrupted. I was lucky enough to never have a dusk priest in the left group, but would have done him last if there was one.

Things that help:
- Having cc mark their targets so you know they are ready - one afk cc and it could be a wipe
- CC'ers whose targets are dead cc anything running around loose, sheepers take over from warlocks, it's faster to grab next target if its not being feared.
- Install Big Brother addon and type: /bb settings polyoutput raid (it's a toggle) - one multishotting hunter will make you wipe all day. You need to know who is constantly breaking cc and remove them else this is just an exercise in futility.
- Would also help to have some way for healers to show they are ready, not sure how though. We wiped a few times because tank and cc marked up, but healers were slow. Maybe they have to say in raid chat or /yell this healer rdy! or something.
- Everyone should be on vent
- You want as little afk'ing as possible, people should be able to go 2 hrs without a break

Speed is key:
You want to get in as many runs in 2 hrs as possible so put a symbol on yourself and wait so you are the last person to hop out, then when people see your symbol they can hop back in. Get everyone to mount up when they get in, ride to places, mark target/yell then pull. Taunt then move onto next target when current tank target is low, disarm too if vindicator/slayer, so you don't drag a cleaving mob behind you as you run to next target (not that I did that!).

Loot:
Master loot unless you're all guildies - sunwell trash runs are famous for ninja looting problems. A sunmote sells for 1k+. We did rolls for main spec/maxed profession right away on bop items, rolling for boe items at end of the 2 hrs (you don't stay for whole 2 hrs, you don't get any boe items, works great). Roll on sunmotes first, max one per person, then gems, max one per person, none if you got a sunmote. Make sure everyone knows the loot rules when you start, including what you will do with Marks of Illidari. I think loot threshold should be set to blues (for mining pattern) and people just loot all greens including marks. I was a bit annoyed that all the marks of illidari and greens were claimed by a guild in my second run when there were at least 50% puggers, and they didn't state this in advance.

What to wear:
For big robot - avoidance, best gear you have
For rest of trash - max threat set if you have one, else just best tank gear. All adds are tauntable.

Raid ID:
Just doing trash doesn't save you, but if there is someone from a sunwell guild then you will be saved to their ID. Just let people know - chances are sunwell guilds make their own trash raids, but you don't want to save someone planning on raiding sunwell with their guild to someone elses run.

Your DPS/healing/tanking can rock, but you suck

Thist — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:33:05 GMT

I have noticed this before, but more often now that I pug a lot - there are people who do amazing dps/healing/tanking, but suck horribly despite this. There are two main reasons that they suck - not paying attention/listening, and lack of mobility.

They can even be in tier 6 because most high end guilds will tolerate a certain % of people who "always stand in the fire, lol" and who need to be told exactly what they have to do.

You will notice these people sucking a lot in places where listening and moving come into play, examples: when your incredibly high dps group has 3-4 deaths to chains on illhoof in kara, netherspite owns you for weird reasons, a bad infernal means a wipe on prince, the second boss in hyjal is impossible, lurker deaths, najentus spear isn't thrown, vashj core not tossed, kael's first add kills them, they shatter people on gruul etc.

Sometimes people "sort of" compensate for not being able to dps/heal/tank and move by just stopping their dps/healing/tanking then moving, then resuming it again. Or they compensate for not paying attention by learning one new way to not get killed per attempt. This saves them on some encounters, but still makes things painful for the entire raid.

I would always rather have an average person who can move and is paying attention than a great person who is lacking in either.

I have some ideas on how they can improve - I'll talk about paying attention/listening first. If you know you will have frequent unavoidable interruptions then tell your RL and give them the option to replace you, it's the polite thing to do. Other than that, the solutions are generally obvious - stop watching TV while you play, get drinks and snacks ready before raiding, make use of the scheduled afks, listen carefully to strats, save chatting with friends for later and put up a /dnd during raids, and just overall be considerate.

The entire raid should never be waiting on you. You need to listen all the time there isn't a general raid afk, not just after the pull - you can miss things like your expected position, whether you should be wearing dps gear or not, what symbols mean etc.

If you are called out for making the entire raid wait then don't get pissy and throw out overused sympathy-inducing remarks at your RL in an argumentative tone - your attention is a basic raiding requirement, not a favor you do to the raid. Excuses (even good or funny ones) are never as good or funny as you think, and really annoy more people than you think. A quick apology and not doing it again are the best thing to do if you messed up.

Now the problem of mobility - this is something I have struggled with, so here are some things that helped me: changing A and D keys so they don't move your char and force you to mouse move, binding your main clicks to keys so you can do them while moving, doing arena and bgs and learning to hit those bastards who are strafing around you, and leveling a character of the faction you don't usually play (so you can't autopilot cos you don't know where anything is) without using your mouse.

It does take practice, and some people just get it right away and you may not, but don't get disheartened - even if you only learnt to hit one key instead of clicking this week it still made you better.

Anyway, end of my rant.

My Top 10 Wow Moments

Thist — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:35:44 GMT

Copying some other people on here with listing these - only listing ones to do with tanking though :-)

1. Tanking BRD
2. Downing the Spider boss in ZG
3. Tanking Onyxia
4. Getting my Suneater after around the 25th heroic mech
5. Downing Moroes for the first time
6. Getting my shield from Gruul
7. Completing my nature and frost resist sets
8. Downing Vashj
9. Spending around 400 badges as soon as the new badge gear came out
10. Solo-tanking Hydross

Back to Wow :-)

Thist — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:37:37 GMT

I tried Age of Conan - I think I gave it a fair chance and tried different character classes, leveled past 40 etc. I really wanted to like it, but it just isn't the game for me. I'm not going into all the reasons, it just stopped being fun at some point.

I am really enjoying wow again after the break - I may even join a late-night raiding guild and get back into raiding. :-)

Trying Age of Conan

Thist — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:23:35 GMT

Not sure yet if I like it enough to play it a lot or not.

I was annoyed at Funcom for some out-of-game things like them advertising 7-day guest passes (1 with normal edition, more with collectors), but not giving them out yet (no ETA either).

In-game bug that I am most annoyed at: the bank, auction house, mailing system is down (all same NPC).

Other bugs that haven't affected me yet but that sound pretty horrible: respeccing feats removes all your professions and you can't get them back at this time, some characters are stuck crashing in a loop in areas, you can get ganked before you load, and while talking to npcs. Anyone had any of these happen to them?

On the plus side: graphics are nice (although not as nice as I expected - I gave my char a large rear and her starting bikini overlapped with flesh, and often her boobs show from the side in odd ways).

I'll try it some more this weekend and see if it seems worth it.