>How to bear in Cataclysm: Part 2

>

Well! This is part two… getting into the real nitty-gritty… the actual in-dungeon method. If you haven’t checked it out, you should see Part 1 first.

So… your dungeon group is put together. Congratulations! Now stop hyperventilating… Relax and take a deep breath. Take a look at your group makeup, and what dungeon you’re in. Recognize what your party members can do CC-wise, and if you’re unsure ask. If it’s a pug, don’t be ashamed or afraid to say that you aren’t familiar with the instance you’re running. (Or that you’ve never tanked it before, at the very least). You never know what kind of group you’re going to come across. If someone in the group says they’ve done the place before, then don’t be afraid to have them mark things for you so you can learn. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to use your cooldowns.. EVEN ON TRASH. Some trash hits as hard as some of the lighter bosses. You’re going to take a beating. If you feel threatened start using things… just don’t blow them all at once.

Now then. There’s two ways to start a pull. You can initiate it, and have CC cast right as you’re running in, or have the CC cast before you run in, and pull the mobs off of them. Personally I prefer the 2nd way. The mobs are coming towards you while your enrage is… giving you rage. Mobs heading towards whoever cast the first CC, when they’re in range hit thrash/swipe. You should have your kill order setup, and marked with a skull (or whatever mark your group has agreed on to die first).

Now, I won’t give you a specific set of things to do to keep aggro on a group of mobs, because it really depends on a LOT of different factors. Biggest thing I can tell you is to keep thrash and swipe on cooldown if there’s more than two mobs. If everyone is focusing on your kill order, that should generally be enough, but you need to pay attention to everything. Watch your healer’s mana bar, your party’s health bar, your healer’s mana bar, your target’s health bar, omen, your healer’s mana bar, the CC’d targets in the back, any patrolling mobs that might be coming too close to you guys, your healer’s mana bar… starting to get the picture yet?

When I tank, my eyes are darting all over the damn screen. On trash i’m literally only looking at the actual trash mobs like 1/5 of the time because there is just so much everything else I need to keep an eye on. It takes a LOT of practice to get good at it. I can tell you right now, you WILL FAIL at some point. Don’t take it too hard. I still screw up at some point. I know the DPS still screw up. Sometimes extra pulls are made, sometimes you may get too close to a CC’d mob with your swipe/thrash.. Don’t panic. Panicking is the worst thing you can do, and can easily spell death for your group.

When your group wipes, take a second to take stock of what happened. What could you have done better? Did a mob get past you somehow? Did you position your combat mobs too close to your CC’d mobs? Was the kill order followed? Did a patrol catch you offguard? All of these things can, will, and DO happen. I have done them all… your guild’s main tank has done them all… the main tank of Ensidia has done them all. /shrug. Nobody’s perfect, and to expect such from yourself is only going to set yourself up for failure.

Now then… how do you keep aggro on packs of mobs? Thrash and Swipe are going to be your main abilities, but as they both have 6 second cooldowns, obviously they’re not the only buttons you’ll be hitting. I generally thrash, swipe, and mangle my main target, then start targetting my other targets and hit them with lacerates, hitting thrash and swipe as they come off cooldown, or occasionally mauling (you have that glyphed, right?) if you find yourself near the top end of your rage bar (as a rule, it’s usually safe at 60 rage or more). Let the DPS do their work. Tab through your targets and keep an eye on your threat relative to theirs. Watch for errant spell-casts. Use your interrupts whenever you see something to interrupt. Don’t be afraid to use your cooldowns. [b]ALWAYS keep an eye on your healer[/b]. Watch your healer’s mana bar like a hawk in between pulls, and then…

Congratulations! You now have a big ugly boss staring you in the face. Do you know the mechanics of this boss fight? If not, feel free to ask your guildies/group members if there’s anything specific you need to know. Unless your group’s committed to going in blind. Make sure your group has completely mana’ed and healed up… make sure they’re *ready* (yes there is a difference… sometimes people go afk for a split second, or will alt-tab for something briefly)… and then make the pull. Use your enrage to generate some opening rage, and hit it with your Faerie fire.

Now from the pull the first thing you need to worry about is positioning the boss. It’s a 100% safe bet to put the boss’s back to your party members. Unless there are obstacles that prevent that, any melee in your group will thank you for it. If you’re unfamiliar with the mechanics of a fight, or if you know there is are knockbacks involved, putting your large butt against a wall is also a good idea. Now the problem with putting your back against a wall is that it will screw up your visibility immensely. There’s a large joke running around that all tanks ever see is boss crotch. Rotate your camera around to your side so you can keep an eye on the party. That way any adds that spring up can be controlled quickly.

Once your boss is in melee range, and while your positioning him, it’s time to start building threat… I mean, after all… that’s your job as a tank, right? You absorb hits, and you build threat to make sure no one ELSE has to eat any of hits. Your FF will give a fair amount of opener threat. Now your highest threat generating ability, as well as your hardest hitting ability, is going to be Mangle. Mangle should be used as soon as it comes off of cooldown, EVERY time it comes off of cooldown. Watch for your berserk proc’d mangles as well… they take priority over everything else. The majority of your button presses are going to be Lacerate. You always want to get lacerate up to 3 stacks, and then Pulverize. Maul can be thrown in as your rage gets higher (again, 60 rage or higher it’ll be safe to maul). I personally don’t find the bleeds from lacerate hitting hard enough to be worth leaving stacked while Pulverize’s buff runs lower. I could be wrong about this, but it’s how [i]I, personally[/i] do it.

With all that, this is what your combat priority should be

Faerie Fire (to keep/refresh the debuff) > Demoralizing Roar (to keep/refresh the debuff) > Mangle > Maul (over 60 rage. It’s off the GCD so fit it in anywhere really) > Lacerate x3 > Pulverize > Faerie Fire (if the buff isn’t in need of refreshing/you’re out of rage for some reason)

It’s worth noting that you *shouldn’t* run out of rage, but if you slip up and maul at the wrong time, you can definitely find yourself with a free global cooldown. Now, as for your defensive cooldowns. You need to learn what your healer can and cannot handle. If you see anything going on, and your health bar is dropping to an uncomfortable level, pop a cooldown. Depending on what’s “uncomfortable” for you, should really depend on what cooldown you use. Barkskin is a short cooldown (And it can be used while you’re stunned too), so it’s a safe bet to use that one first. If, for some reason, you end up REALLY on low health, use another one (frenzied regen or survival instincts)… The worst thing you can do is panic and blow all 3 cooldowns at once. Sure, you’ll take very little damage for a period of time, and your heals will pop you up much higher, quicker, but if the shit hits the fan again within 3 minutes, then you’re boned.

Have you noticed a recurring theme here? A lot of what’s involved in successfully tanking is keeping your head straight, and not spazzing out. Sure, some people can boil it down to a bunch of math and formulas and stat weights and priorities and such… and to a point those are ALL important, but a tanking is a lot more seat-of-your-pants style than DPSing is. Tanks have to be proactive AND reactive, and legitimately, the entire group depends on your ability to perform your job well. Don’t expect to be an amazing tank right off the bat, but take the small successes with the failures, and find out what you do well, and where you can improve. Ask your party members or guildies for advice… find a good bear that you know and ask them for tips on what might help with certain encounters or trash pulls that give you headaches.

Feel free to leave me any comments or questions.

>Form of – a BEAR!

>Well, i’ve done a ton of rambling and ranting posts. I’ve talked about my guild and how we’ve raided, or about my titles and achievements… I’ve tooted my own horn quite a bit, and I figure now it’s time to finally put something *useful* on this blog. What can I talk about that’s useful? Hmm… that’s a tough one. OH! Druids! I’m quite a good druid tank!

Well! Obviously the first thing to look at is how to spec your druid for maximum… tanking… awesomness! So for level 80, there are basically two different talent trees you can go with.

This is the spec I run with. It is pure tank, no kitty-ing about. Pretty straight forward. Glyphs are all but a no-brainer because they’re really the only ones that will have ANY effect on our tanking. I actually just switched to this spec from a VERY slight (2 point) differential, and I’ll explain why after the 2nd screenshot.

So the only difference between these two specs are the points I moved out of Feral Aggression and into Primal Madness… currently I am running with the points in Primal Madness. Initially I liked the idea of having a 1-time three stack of Faerie Fire for the DPS increase… I still do like that, to be quite honest, but the reason I moved to Primal Madness is for trash packs and 5-mans. The extra rage generated by our Enrage ability makes it so we can almost swipe as soon as we pull a pack. It also makes it so we can start our rotation more quickly on boss encounters.

I’ve been questioned a few times on my choice of the points in Brutal Impact. I suppose you could make the arguement that the extra interrupts are situational but DAMMIT if I don’t like having them, because i’ve spent so much time tanking WITHOUT having worthwhile interrupts… and no, an interrupt with a stun DOES not count, because you can’t pull mobs towards you when they’re effing stunned. The other thing you may ask about is why I only put 2 points in Fury Swipes… Druid threat isn’t in a place that’s hurting in any way right now on single targets. 2 points procs plenty enough, and our threat is insane after the first 5-10 seconds on a mob.

So, assuming all of these things (and assuming Brutal Impact, if you’re like me) then let’s move forward into tanking at level 85. Not a lot is going to change from your level 80 spec. No real need to change specs unless you want to test weird things out, so I came up with basically 2 different level 85 specs.

This first one you’ll see that I have a spare talent point available. The reason for this is I figure it’s kind of your “do whatever the fuck you want with it.” If you want to go with max TPS For that point, put it in it should probably go into Stampede. Honestly, though, the TPS generated by 2 points in Stamepede, let alone 1, is hardly worth the poinst from a pure tanking point of view. A point in Feral Aggression could be handy to 2-stack FFF instead of 1-stack. One point in Perseverance (in the resto tree) for a bit of extra spell damage reduction, but that’s properly a bit situational… which brings me to my second tree below.

This tree doesn’t have any spare points, and honestly I wish it had just one more talent point to finish out Perseverance in resto… but as I mentioned earlier, this could be a very situational setup to have. It really just depends on how many bosses in Cataclysm deal random magic damage, and whether 4% will really make that much of a difference.

Now.. With all of this stuff I want anyone reading this to realize a couple things.

First – I am not in the beta. My lvl 85 druid builds are purely hypothetical based on my experience with druid tanking post 4.0, and with what I know about how the theorycrafting works behind it.

Second – I am no 100% expert. I could very well be proven wrong about some of my ideas. They’re not set in stone by any means, and I am not proclaiming them as such.

Thirdly – I am not responsible for your fuckups. I *can* help if you’d like, but if you tell me that my spec sucks and you can’t get shit to work with it, then well…. your mileage may vary. I’d be more than happy to compare notes with you as long as you’re not a shit-stain about how you approach it.

>Chronicles of an expansion

>
Welp… It’s official..I’ve officially killed every boss Wrath of the Lich King has to offer… Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not 12/12 25m Heroic ICC or anything like that… but every boss fight i’ve thrown myself at has, eventually, fallen before my sword/spell/face/claws. Maybe a little backstory is necessary.

At the beginning of Wrath, I was a mage… The big draenei guy you see as my avatar for blogspot? Yeah that’s him… still in his ABSOLUTELY HIDEOUS T8 tunic… Hey Blizz? Clothies are for robes, not tunics. Fuck off with that leg-showing cloth shit, mmkay? Anyway…

I raided in BC as a mage, and that was how I started Wrath… Clusterfucking my way through Naxx with pugs and the occasional guild run (we weren’t a raiding guild, btw)… I succumbed to the bug and left my casual/social guild shortly after Ulduar was released, and joined a burgeoning raiding guild. These guys were… struggling to say the least. (I won’t name any guild names, or even server names, lest they somehow manage to stumble upon this blog and think i’m speaking ill of them.)… The guild was moderately well managed by the officers. The GM wasn’t a raider, which I thought was odd, but whatever right? But in Ulduar we just… couldn’t manage to get it together really. We made…………. a little progress. Only killing (oh god lemme count… ) 8 bosses out of 13 or 14 if you count Algalon. We only ever downed 1 keeper as a guild, Hodir. We threw ourselves at Freya and Thorim a few times with nothing even resembling success, and we weren’t even dumb enough to look towards Mimiron’s room… and of course not having been able to kill all of the keepers, we couldn’t even attempt Vezax or Yogg, even if we wanted to.

The frustration of going 8 bosses in (in a 4 hour raid duration, mind you) and then going brain dead and barely even giving half-hearted attempts at anything else REALLY got to me, and shortly after ToC was released I retired myself from raiding and rolled a brand new toon on Wyrmrest Accord… an RP server. Why an RP server? Cause I knew someone IRL who was on that server, and WoW lore had *always* fascinated me, especially since I used to play the ORIGINAL Warcraft game wayyyyyyyyyyy back in the day… but I digress.

I spent about a year on Wyrmrest Accord… made friends, RP’ed, dungeoned a bit, leveled a SHIT TON of new alts, and just had a general relaxing time… ToC came and went with little more than a notice from me, and then Icecrown Citadel was patched in… and there was a little tickle in the back of my head. Along with this little tickle came with a toon I had had more fun on than i’d had in who-knows how long…

My hunter… God looking at my UI back then makes me *cringe*. Anyway… I’ve kinda taken to a lot of toons in my WoW career, but I absolutely fell in LOVE with the hunter.. From levelling him to dungeoning with him. So much so that I ground heroics like I had never done before, and soon had him a full t9 set of gear, and found myself going back to wowhead and find out how to properly spec… learn my rotation, etc etc.

I loved my hunter so much that I did something I hadn’t done in over a year.

Trade Chat:“Starting a brand new ICC10 group. Looking for DPS. PST class/spec/experience”

Me: “Marksman hunter… No ICC experience, but i’ve read up on several of the fights, and I know my rotation well… no idiot, I know how to raid.”

Yep… I pugged into an ICC 10… and holy fuck was it fun. After about 3 hours of raiding, I found myself with a 6-boss kill experience, and that little tickle in the back of my head had suddenly turned into a full fledged roaring desire to return back to raiding. I also had a standing invite from the raid leader to join their guild and raid with them… something I was very hesitant to do because I really liked my tiny little RP guild… but the thirst just would not be denied. I talked to my GM and asked around, listened to a few podcasts, and finally transferred my hunter over to Shadowsong-US… a very large guild called “The Illuminati Order”, associated with the “Warcraft Outsiders” podcast. I really dived in headfirst into raiding with this guild. In fact, my first week in the guild I got to see 10 “Fall of the Lich King (10 player)” achievements spammed. This guild had gotten their first LK kill, and I joined them just in time to see it… and no I wasn’t involved LOL.

Along with my hunter, I transferred one other toon to Shadowsong. A baby little fuzzball of a druid named Vaerron.

Man, that’s still one of my all time favorite screenshots… ANYWAY. I levelled Vaerron up to be a tank. I became quickly enthralled with it from the first time I successfully tanked a dungeon (Gundrak) at level 78 with the full Eviscerator’s leatherworking crafted set… but I ran into one problem. “Illuminati Order” was an *immense* guild compared to what I was used to (6-700 toons), and they really had no need for raiding tanks. Well, by this point in time I had already started blogging and started networking over twitter, so I put out a call for a relatively casual/progression-ish guild who was willing to recruit an untested tank.

Thus, in July of 2010, I met Amber and Orithea of Brotherhood of Oblivion, on Azgalor… Well, I have already been exceedingly verbose in this post, so I’ll try to cut it short here, but I found my new home on Azgalor… Brotherhood of Oblivion splintered a week after my joining, and Stands In Bad was formed. The rest, as they say, is history. I’ve transferred my original mage to Azgalor, as well as my hunter, and started a few other toons as well. I’ve earned myself a couple kingslayer titles, helped several others earn theirs, became an officer, became a raid leader, and managed to not kill anyone in the process… go figure eh?

Sorry if I have glazed over the last few months of history, but a lot of what has happened since my leaving Illuminati Order has been chronicled on this blog, so I don’t feel like repeating myself too much. A lot of people have had bad things to say about this expansion, but I think they’re absolutely out of their mind. Were there bad parts? Sure… I couldn’t imagine going into ToC as top-end content every week, although I do secretly enjoy the raid to a point. I’ve gone back and finished the bosses i’d never killed in Ulduar, and even done all of their hard modes, all the way up to 7/12 in ICC10 HM. That’s pretty impressive, in my opinion, for someone who had “retired from raiding” at one point in time.

Thus Wrath of the Lich King comes to an end. I’m ready for it to end, but I can look back over the last 24 months rather fondly. Friendships made and ended. Raids killed me, and fell before me. Frustrations were had, money was spent on server transfers, disillusionment was emerged from, and all-in-all… I don’t think I would change one bit of it.