AoE tanking or tanking for AoE

There's been a recent thread where it's been suggested that paladin AoE tanking it too good which leads to the other tanking classes feeling unloved and clamouring for buffs.

While it's true that the tools available to a paladin tank are well suited for generating threat on a number of bad guys all at once, especially if they're undead. In this expansion all tanks were given a method of generating threat on a number of mobs all at once helping to the removal of crowd control from all but the toughest heroic instances.

I do have to wonder now though if the reason for the current upset about what can be done is the resurgence of running heroics for the daily brace of frost badges. Given that the base level of gear available is now well in excess of what was required when level 80 characters first started running those instances and every dps character has some kind of AoE spell. Is it more a case that all tanks can't necessarily stop a stray mob from running off to smack the aggro monkey when they do all out massive AoE damage when all they need to do it stop the bad guys running after the healer.

However if the DPS went point and shoot on individual mobs using an assist macro the tanks shouldn't have as many issues, and threat indicators such as Omen or Threat Plates will mean you've got a better idea of what to do.

Now is this the fault of the class designers, not really, it's more a 'creative use of game mechanics' for something that we generally now massively out-gear and see as more of a chore rather than the challenge of say the new raid zone.

Rather than trying to homogenise the tanks and the type of threat output they produce it would be nice to see the dps (of which I am at times) adjusting what they do to make it easier for the tank to do what they do.

Hitting the heroics

Having got used to the new druid spec, keybound all the new abilities to something useful and checked out the changes to armour etc. I felt that if there were enough willing volunteers in the guild it was time to hit up some instances for fun (and achievements).

Fortunately the normal and heroic instance of the day was Black Morass so there were a few takers so in we went. Once the group was formed and I was given lead to mark up I duly set the difficulty to heroic and in we went and cleared the beasties the patrol around. I started the event by running towards Medivh and then swiftly moved onto the first portal. The group consisted of feral druid, enh and resto shaman, ret pally (seriously how my damage are these guys doing at the moment) and a shadow priest. So I tanked the big elite next to the portal and the pally used consecrate to pick up all the adds allowing me to swipe for more aggro.

After the 3rd portal went down with no real problem, questions were asked as to whether we were truely running this on heroic mode (in fact I had to check the settings in the difficulty menu). Everything said we were doing the right thing so we pushed on to the first boss who promptly died, saved us to the instance and dropped a badge confirming what everything else was telling us. The rest of the instance went just as smoothly and again Medivh was able to bring the Orcs to Azeroth whilst we were able to complete the quests for extra badges.

Buoyed by our success we decided to go for another one with the same group and decided on Shattered Halls. If I'd been nervous about doing BM as a heroic, I was very nervous about Shattered Halls, especially given the amount of crowd control the group didn't have. Oh yeah, roots works in doors now, and is a great way to initiate a pull providing you pick the right add. Also the change to feral faeire fire to act as a DoT (which can crit) means that you can easily break crowd control from range (our Pally was using Repentance as another form of cc) whilst mopping up the adds.

There were a few deaths along the way (including mine) but at times we were just taking the whole pulls of 5 or 6, marking the skull and then just taking down all the rest having swiped for England to keep the rest off the healer or the dps. We even managed to take down all the bosses in time for the timed event for the Trial of the Naruu.

Other than the changes for swipe, faeire fire and swipe there are some other fun things in the feral druid arsenal.
Survival Instincts - Health boost for those 'Oh S***' moments handy for trying to survive those extra few seconds should you end up with more than you can handle or the healer gets incapacitated.
Beserk - Wow, just wow. Mangle hits 3 mobs at once and has no cooldown other than the global one. Unfortunately didn't make me immune to the Death Coil of one of the bosses but does provide a chance for a massive threat lead if you use it at the start of a fight.

There's still plenty of things to get used to and remember, potions and the herbalism heal being the main ones but there's some more finesse required to the tanking in the game now and more judgement calls. Currently the fights and instances might seem a little easy but once we start hitting Northrend and the fights our new abilities are tuned for it's going to be a whole new ball game. Can't wait :)

Karazhan Off Tanking

Now Medrare has the Master's Key, he's fully able to sign up to guild runs on his own merit and start tanking things with his face. The run was pretty smooth with only one wipe due to a ninja pull of an elite pack and we survived it the second time it happened (well I didn't but it's not a wipe if half the raid survive). It was good to learn boss fights from a new perspective even if you can't really see a thing of what's going on with the rest of the raid.

Attumen the Horseman
A place for the off tank to shine as you start the encounter by tanking Midnight until the mount up. Our boomkin pulled aggro and died before I could grab him back but other than that it was smooth whilst he was dps'd down. Once phase 3 started and I wasn't needed to tank anymore it was time to go cat and pretend to be a rogue. However one of our priests didn't survive the transition to phase 3 and so required a battle rez and innervate before I could get back to it and down he went.

Moroes
No need to run after adds here, just a case of keeping up with the main tank on threat and staying alive when the MT gets gouged. Again we lost a healer due to a bad combination of the MT being gouged and me being blinded. No problems a quick battle rez and innervate again and we'll be back in the fight. Unfortunately I didn't spot that I wasn't targeting the healer before hitting the button and innervated myself. As it was we managed and got everything killed without losing any of the raid.

Little Red Riding Hood
A rarity for our guild as we always seem to get Wizard of Oz, but an Opera where I wasn't really required to tank so time to go cat again. The plan went a bit south when a priest died whilst Red Riding Hood I needed to shift back out and help keep the tank alive with rolling lifeblooms, and the occasional big heal when I managed to resist the fears.

Maiden of Virtue
Again only one tank required so this fight was almost identical to when I've done it on Crash except running out to heal is a lot easier when you not relying on potion and bandage cool downs, and again it's possible to help keep the main tank alive when the main healers are all stunned due to Repentance.

Sadly no tanking/cat dps loot dropped but there are the lovely badges to compulsively collect and it was a lot of fun fighting the encounters with a different set of skills and responsibilities. Hopefully there will be enough raids over the summer that I can get along to to try out all the fights again and hopefully get my gear a good leg up ready for the expansion.

Little Bear in Big Raid

Last night was the last of our scheduled Kara runs for the raiding week, with the run from Aran up to Prince staring us in the face. Given that Med still isn't keyed I was all signed up with Crash ready to interrupt Aran's spells and run away whilst enfeebled from the Prince's Shadow Nova.

However when invite time came around we found ourselves a tank short so Med was called in to try and not die to the nasty elite mobs that patrolled around the former home of Medivh.

Things went fairly smoothly, our healers did a great job keeping my health a positive value and deaths were just a part of learning to deal with the new tank and how well I can cope with the damage from the bad guys.

Anyway we were soon outside the Shade's room and it was decided tanking on the summoned elementals would be better than dps and interrupt given we didn't have any warlocks to fear or banish. One quick(ish) fight later and Aran was dead and there was badges and loot to be distributed.

After a quick bio break we headed up to the Chess event which was very smooth and the dust covered chest gave up a very nice necklace for me before disaster struck. Suddenly a few internet connections (including my own) broke down and we had to call the raid early before the Prince could feel our wrath.

All in all a good night given the 'chucked in the deep end' feeling at the beginning and trying to learn the encounters from a new perspective. Hopefully once I can get the key and on the quest chains inside the rest of the encounters will have that shiny new feeling to them again.

Gathering the karazhan key fragments

Now while patch 2.4 removed the need to hold The Master's Key in order to enter Karazhan our guild still has a rule that any character that wants to go raiding should have gone through the atunement quests, partially to open up the other quests for the nice reputation reward rings, and to ensure that people have had at least some experience of playing that character in a group, which is important given that it's now very easy to level to 70 without stepping foot into an instance.

So now that Medrare is 70 and getting some tanking experience under his belt, the key fragments needed to be collected from the various arcane containers. The first step was to head into the Shadow Labyrinth and required the full clear.

Our group did fairly well considering, the first boss didn't cause any major headaches, the time for fun guy killed a few people but we got him down before he got all of us or incited enough chaos for us to kill each other. Grandmaster Vorpil gave us a couple of scares, once for not getting out of Hellfire, and the other when a rogue skeleton popped up and took out our healer. The third time was the charm and we moved on and stood face to face with the essence of sound Murmur.

I've got bad memories of this fight on Crash who managed to die on every attempt due to getting hit by Sonic Boom. However this time no such problems, Quartz made it a doddle to know when to run out and Feral Charge means that you're always on the very edge of the hit box when it's time to head back in there. Down he went and after defeating the guardian the first fragment was retrieved.

Lessons learnt: Having important information up front and centre in my UI makes things so much easier in terms of keeping aware. Once I've sorted out the full tanking setup I'll post some screenshots along with Crash's dps version.

The 2nd and 3rd fragments require trips into Steamvaults and Arcatraz and whilst not a full clear enough to warrant a full group and some team effort.

Doing things a bit backwards we went into Arcatraz first, and seeing how we went past the first boss we took a chance and had a go. Our boomkin died quite soon in and our healer succumbed quite close to the end. Unfortunately I died just as the boss did so whilst not a complete wipe, the two mages left standing meant that it was a runflight back from the graveyard. After that we cleared the rest of the necessary trash and the third fragment was secured.

Lessons learnt: Trying to spot void circles on the floor, whilst tanking a boss with your butt against the wall is impossible, and moving out of line of sight of the healers can cause greater problems than just your health going down.

Finally we went into Steamvaults, a place I will learn to love if the Earthwarden is to be mine. The was a slight hiccup when I managed to pull two groups but other than that things went well and we managed to down the first boss again even if it did require the mages to go nuclear on the elementals.

Lessons learnt: Just because every other pull has been flawless doesn't mean you can be any less careful about the next one.

Just Black Morass remains to get the key blessed by Medivh and I can go test my tanking skills in Karazhan against some of those nasty raid bosses.

Thrall saved by random PuG

So there I was, finishing up some quests in Terrorkar to try and ding honored with Sha'tar for the shoulders BBB recommended for entry Kara tanking when a random tanking whisper arrives.

While it didn't necessarily match my suggestions it was for an instance I wanted/needed to do; Old Hillsbrad in the Caverns of Time. The group consisted of two druids (one feral, one resto), two hunters and a warlock. I wouldn't say it was the smoothest run in the world and marking, cc and patrols tended to make things interesting. We however took out all the bosses without any major hassles, and there was only one death when we were taking out the waves of dragonkin before the final boss. Not sure why but it's likely that one got away from me and Thrall and wasn't trapped. Not a major problem, combat rez from the resto druid and he's back in the fight.

Annoyingly the nice tanking ring didn't drop but it was a smooth run and means that I'm all set up to do Black Morass once I've got all the key fragments for Kadger.

As a final plea, if you're going to put yourself into LFG for Old Hillsbrad please have done the walkaround quest, it can seriously wind up the rest of the group if we're having to wait whilst you get the guided tour.

And then there were two

After a weekends dedicated questing Medrare hit the big 7-0 and equipped the rest of the clefthoof set in preparation for some end game tanking.

Interestingly the macro to check for critability indicates that I'm already uncritable which surprised me, but must be the resiliance that my rings and trinket along with the defense from gems. 13K health and 17K armor mean that I can probably do the early level 70 instances (mmm Steamvaults for CE rep) but Kara will have to wait awhile longer. Also given that our raid leader has decreed that characters still need to be keyed even though Blizzard have removed the attunement so I'll be running the 5 instances required by that.

I've certainly enjoyed levelling a druid, there's more variety in the fighting, plus being able to heal rather than relying on bandages or food reduces down time. The biggest advantage was running through stuff I'd already done but there were a few quests to try now the mobs were no longer elite, and I'm all set up to finish the Greatmother chain of quests in Nagrand, which is really cool given that I missed this on Crash the first time round.

Here's looking forward to some end game playing on a new character, and remember the suggestions for whispering druids randomly in game ;)

Careless Whispers

Well this has probably been blogged about before, but as it's still happening (and more importantly to me) here's my view.

So just recently I'll be questing away in a zone when out of nowhere I'll get a whisper along the lines of "r u feral". That's it, no hello, no explanation, just a question of how I've spent my talent points. Generally I assume it's because someone is trying to put an instance run together and are looking for a tank (or healer).

Now it's not that I mind being asked to help out, heck I might even be tempted if I was going to be online for a bit and bored, but interrupting my play time without so much as a hi/hello isn't likely to get a favorable response from me. This also happened when I was levelling up Crash, but that just tended to be the abbreviation of the instance being PUG'd.

Right, so now we know what won't work as a way of getting my attention, what might. Well here's a 3 point plan

1. Be polite - you don't know what I'm doing and will most likely be in the middle of something when you send that whisper.
2. Use proper words - if you take the time to write a proper question, I may well take the time to right a proper response.
3. Be original - You won't be the first person to send a request so make yours stand out from the crowd.

Finally an apology, if you've done all that and still not got a response please don't take it personally, I may well have missed the whisper in amongst guild chat, officer chat and other spaff. Good luck with your adventures and remember not to break the cc