Circle of Tanks

Not that I am a big name poster, but I'll fill it out.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Xarnen(US-Cairne), Tauren Druid, Feral

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
Heroics, and Raids (10/25 dont matter)

What is your favorite tankng spell for your class and why?
Berserk. For scary trash pulls you can mangle maul swipe spam pretty good, and for single target threat it's a nice boost during bloodlusts and such.

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Frenzied Regeneration. I really only use it as part of strategic cooldown management as it's a huge threat loss to get good use out of it.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
This is a really a tough call, because I'm divided between bear's ability to kite+swipe adds and generate nice sustained threat while positioning vs the flexibility in changing gear to gimmick out encounters.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
Interrupts in raids. Most bears don't spec 2 points into improved bash and feral charge is rarely practical.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
It really depends on the encounter, but more often than not boss tanking. Bears have so much stamina that they can just outlast huge damage intake. If the boss hits like a sissy but has adds all over the place, then that's probably my secondary home (Hi Jaraxxus).

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
Warriors. They more naturally spec into Improved demo shout and thunderclap for the speed debuff allowing me to be the terror tank focusing on high damage output(sunders ftw!)

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Paladins, by far. Many(not all) paladins tend to have an elitist attitude about their class. Also their ungodly threat generation and captain america shields tend to cause a lot more problems than they realize.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
Tunnel-vision on omen.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
Since bears lack snap aoe threat, overzealous AOE is a concern, but I'd say vent chatter during encounters when stuff I call out is missed.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
Not really. We have stupid amounts of health and mitigation, awesome damage, and great dps flexibility with cat form. We lack ungodly threat, great cooldowns, and viable interrupts. So that does kind of pigeon hole is for being either the kite tank or the big hit tank.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Recount to evaluate deaths, and world of logs sometimes to evaluate performance. Mostly I evaluate my in fight threat management and did we kill the boss or not.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?

That we're a lot more effective than people think against magical damage.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
Multi-target threat management

Effective Health or Avoidance and why? Effective Health, because of how well bears scale armor and stamina.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Death Knights.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
X-Perl, Omen, DBM, and SCT.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? Stam, stam and more stam. I tend to adjust to threat/avoidance through trinket management or occasionally and older piece of gear enchanted for resistance.

We Press On

So the guild is still stagnant and I haven't decided yet what to do for the long haul. We've been pug raiding, downing Ony 10 and another TOC clear since I've last written. Pugged the first two fights of Toc25 and picked up the neck piece off of Jaraxxus. I've also recently made the conversion to Jewelcrafting and netted another 78 stam and lost maybe 20 agi and some crit. I've had the death-warmed belt crafted and now await to pick up some expertise gear (either the 232 helm, Ony's polearm and/or the Acidmaw Boots), to balance out the loss from changing from the badge belt. The warlock saunters on and picks up badges here and there, and still yearns for the H TOC dagger to upgrade from the POS piece from Naxx-10. DK is level 70 and well into the Howling Fjord quests. He's on a rest cycle awaiting to max out rested xp (that 20% XP boost from boa gear sure burns it fast). The priest continues to plug along and is up to level 40, kickin shadowform, and well established in alc/herbs. The rogue is a mining bot/guild JC for now ,and doesnt do much else. I guess what I'm getting at here is that I will grind my way to Arthas and be in excellent shape to powerlevel all the toons and be fully armed and dangerous in Cataclysm.

0 for a billion

Well I managed to tank both Ulduar 25 and ToCR 10 this weekend and came up with not much else other than some emblems.

Ulduar 25
Flame Leviathan - Meh 2 towers, not much of an issue. I don't need the ring, and I already have the bracers. I drove a siege.
Razorscale - I tanked adds and switched to dps once she was ground. Nothing meaningful dropped.
XT - Again nothing meaningful dropped (WTB Twisted Visage. I Main Tanked the boss
Ignis - Drops Heart of Iron, and I lose the roll. I've Main Tanked this guy on 25 man twice, and he's dropped it twice and I've lost it twice. My luck just sucks
Kologarn - DPS'd the right arm, and tanked the adds.
That's as far as the pug lasted. We made one attempt on Auriya and wiped (WTB Shamans who use tremor totems). I was main tanking the boss and praying swipe covered if the paladin offtanks couldn't hold threat.

TOC 10
Beasts - I started off cat berserking as usual and switched once the other tank had 2 stacks of impale. Then I as usual I tanked Acidmaw, but this time I got the poison debuff right when he died and no one could fire debuff me or keep me healed. So I got watch the group finish off Dreadscale and Icehowl. 1 shot
Jarraxus - I tanked the mistress and adds, and mixed in some cat dps here and there. Nothing special, and 1 shot
Faction champs - Switched to pure cat and was on burst/main duty. Took about 5 tries to get the kill order down. The warlocks had a helluva time keeping the druid banished. Once we decided to kill the druid second, it was easysauce (priest was first). I won the Sunreaver Assassin Gloves
Twins - I tanked the Dark Twin. 2 shot. Pretty easy fight, just had some minor confusion with dps getting the orbs and hitting the correct light/dark portal
Anub - MT. I died in phase 3. Damage was very smooth, but the healers seemed to have forgotten me and all of sudden I was burning CDs to stay alive then...well I didn't have CDs. Somehow the OT picked him and dps was able to finish him off. The shoulders dropped, but they're kinda meh. If I go back to a pure agi build for dps, then they will rock

So yea technically it's 2 for a billion, but those gloves are such a minor upgrade that it really didn't matter and the shoulders are a minor upgrade for dps depending how i compare gemming and such There's two pieces left from TOC 10 I want, Acidmaw Boots and Anguish. Then I'm done, and will be fully ready for 10 man Heroic. Hopefully I can get into a 25 man pug this week (without 5 lolrogues and 4 huntards), and maybe get a piece.

So now what

I think there comes a time for many players where you need to make a serious change to progress. I came into this game as a complete noob to play with my friends. It was a casual endeavor to pass time when I was bored. But as I got into the game, and started catching to them in leveling it became more of a hobby and it was more competitive to progress. I was a late comer near the end of Burning Crusade, and most of the guild was fairly casual - mostly ever doing 5-mans. By the end I was the one pushing to try a guild Karazhan run. I was the one heavily studying my gear and trying to tank heroic dungeons (and failing miserably). And yet at the end, I was by and far light-years ahead of them in terms of gear. I religiously followed Emmerald's gear lists. Since I mostly focused on being a cat, I had a fair amount of badge loot, crafted epics, my good old boe epic staff, and 2 pieces from Karazhan. Other than that silly quest crap from 3.0, no one had this kind of gear. The one warlock had made his epic tailoring set (just like my Primal Intent set), and many had their welfare epics from grinding AV all day. But in terms of PVE gear, I was very solid.

Then comes Lich King. And once again it's me leading the way for the guild. I wasn't the first to 80, but I also got the upgrade a few days after they did and played the DK all the first day. Needless to say though, I caught right up and was the first person well prepared and starting heroics. Lick King made heroics a lot more accessible than BC (e.g Easier), so a lot more of the guild got into them. Nowadays I'm still one of best geared and accomplished members of the guild, but there a few others in the same boat. But the guild has radically altered. What was once a friendly casual guild all of which had some sort of personal connection to each other, now has random strangers as members that raid together. We've gone from that casual group, to the hardcore raiders, and now we're at the burnout point and back to casual friends with a few realm stragglers who can tolerate us (lol). It took some of those of those new strangers to our inner circle to actually make any raiding progress. Now we're back to square one.

So what to do now? I've done everything short of spamming trade chat to try to develop and build this guild. There's one other member who has done his part, and the GM also does a little too. All in all, I'm at a breaking point. I don't know to write this all out to convey my confusion so I'm just going to stream of conscious bullet point it.

- My guild doesn't actively show it wants to progress. But I do.
- My guild is comprised of a lot of good players, many of whom are real life friends that I enjoy playing with.
- For me, it's just a pointless grind to nowhere without guild driven raid progress
- I can't progress my gear very reliablely pugging raids.
- My server does not have much going for it in terms of Horde progression with lots of solid guilds and players. It's not all suckage, but you won't be seeing much in the way of hardmode stuff.
- I want to do hardmodes.
- 10 or 25 man raiding. I love to raid lead for 10s. For 25s? I just want to kill things. I've lead guild run 25 man naxx pug runs and I hated it. Every bit of it.

My options?
1. Soldier on where I am and hope for some good RNG in re-sparking the guild.
Cairne is bloated with tons of small crappy guilds that each have a few good players. We were lucky with the S8 absorption, but that was short lived. Getting a second chance here might not be so good.
2. Join a guild on my own server. There are many I am sure I could easily get into.
This is very realistic option that I'd pursue IF the current guild more or less calls it quits. I'd feel awkward if I just left and stayed on Cairne with them still plugging along.
3. Transfer to another server, and take my chances in the wild.

I guess I actually got to be on with the other officers (at least the 4 main people doing shit) and make a call. Then we'll see what's next.

Toc-10 - How Best to Approach Bear Tanking

As a raid leader I try to take of advantage of the best use of my abilities as a druid tank. I have a good cooperation and synergy with the other MT in our guild, a paladin. We try to make best use of our respective strengths as tanks. I am giving you my view of the world as a bear and raid leader.

There are some assumptions here:
1. The other tank isn't a druid
2. The other tank is MT capable

Gormok
Set your raid frame focus on the other tank. Begin as cat and start up a standard rotation to 5cp rip and then berserk. Keep dpsing the boss until you see the other tank have 2 stacks of the debuff. Quickly go bear, position yourself in front, get up a few lacerates and then taunt. Swap til dead.
Acidmaw and Dreadscale
Ideally you should be tanking Acidmaw if your raid strategy is to burn down Acidmaw. Tank as your raid is comfortable, and then switch back to cat and use berserk again on help burn Dreadscale down. This works best because when Acidmaw goes down, Dreadscale soft enrages so your added dps will help win the fight.
Icehowl
You can stay as cat as long as the other tank is alive on this one. Hopefully berserk is up in time for once he crashes into the wall. BE ALERT though and ready to take over if something goes wrong.

Lord Jaraxxus
Start off by blowing berserk in cat form on the boss and quickly get ready to pick up the mistress. Depending on how fast you can dps down the mistress, quick toss up a demo roar (if relevant) on Jaraxxus and back to cat for some quickie dps. Pick up the infernals and move them out of harms way and away from the legion fire. Growl, faerie fire and feral charge are your friends. Rinse and repeat. The key again is sneaking in cat dps whenever possible and using your mobility to tank the adds.

Faction champs
For me personally I've either zerged the healer with maim finishers or bear tank and kited the warrior/dk as much as possible (nature's grasp is your friend).

Twins.
Nothing special, you'll be bear form the whole time.

Anub
I've only MT'd this, and given how hard he can hit I'd say this favors a bear MT. I pretty much stayed away from the adds and let dps handle them. Key point. Save barkskin for when you are frozen if possible.

More details as I get more fights in there.

This thing still exists?

I never really put much time or effort into this blog, but it feels therapeutic to summarize what's been going on in my WoW world.

The Main - Xarnen
It's been a helluva ride since I last posted. I was promoted to an officer within the guild, and have been actively busting my ass to grow and progress everyone. Sadly all of my efforts have been in vain, and slowly but surely the guild is spiraling into a place of uncertainty. We've gained and lost a few members who have created some minor drama within Bad JuJu (which in relative terms is major since we're MOSTLY drama-free). We've lost a few to burnout, class changes, and real life and it has made a major dent on success as a 10 man raiding guild. We've tried plugging in some other members, and with a good deal of previously cleared content, we've managed by just fine. We're back to pugging, and I hate it. We got off to a rough start with Ulduar because we were pugging with another guild and a bad raid leader. Exit the raid leader and absorb the guild, get on our feet a few weeks later and whammo progression occurs. A new boss every week after a handful of tries. BAM! We get past the keepers and take a first look at General Vezzax. BAM! 3.2 hits and we start looking at ToC, farming heroics for better loot and it starts spiral downwards. Members suddenly stop showing up, and come back and tell us that real life has taken over. It's all too odd that the timing of the patch, and the gradual disappearance of some key members of the guild. Pretty much our raiding has ceased to be meaningful, and at best progression comes as a pug. Sure, I personally have seen my gear skyrocket, but it's mostly due to all the e-z mode epics from the change to the badge system. I've cleared TOC-10 with a couple guildies in a pug, but it doesn't feel the same when you do with your guildmates. Needless to say, I'm pleased with what I have been able to individually accomplish with my character, but I'd trade it all for a full guild Yogg kill.

Reelacks
I've come to grow and depend on this toon. It's really a nice diversion from the pressures of being a guild officer and tank. Sure, I'm still an officer and do officery things when I have him logged on....but it doesn't feel that way. I can play and stand in the back and a good little Onxyia raider---more dots. I absolutely LOVE affliction. I may one day grind out the gold and get a dual spec to fiddle around with demo or destro, but I love the complexity and challenge of a more difficult to master dps rotation (ala cat dps). I learn a bit more each time I play him, and thanks to ez epics he's ready for Uld25/Toc10. Not that I'll get to raid much w him...but it's nice to know "I can". Plus it's handy to have a maxed out tailor/enchanter around.

Nenrax
FINALLY level 80. Maxed out in JC and Mining, and acquired many epic JC patterns. This toon will most likely never develop into much, but that mining prof may quickly turn into Engineering.

Exxiss
I've gotten him back on track a bit and decided to make him my skinning and ore bot. I mean what else are DKs good for? ;-) He's 64, well rested up, and well into the 300s in both gathering profs. A few more days of AT dailies on Xar, and I'll get the BoA chest and powerlevel him. Then Xar goes JC and ditches skinning with the stash I've made on leveling up mining. Then another farming circuit and usage of the leftovers and get the rogue maxed out on Engineering

Raxnen,
Fully BoA'd out, level 38, and steadily progressing on herbs/alc. Not much else to say tho I do like shadow priest. It gets easier every level and I can't wait to get shadowform. He'll still only level while fully rested and I play til the rested XP is burned through. Keeps the time invested to progressing earned fast and easy. It worked well for the rogue for more than half his levels and the warlock from 70-80. This one by far will be easiest since he's had BoA gear since level 1 I believe.

I won't make/play anymore toons until the next expansion. I don't know where I'll be at that time, so no real need. If I do make a new toon, it will be a goblin elemental shaman inscriptionist. Beyond that no clue. I still have my lol-a-din on the pvp server that I play if/when Cairne is down.

Alt-itis and project Self Sustaining

Just a brief update on the status of Nenrax and Raxnen.
Raxnen burned through a good chunk of rested xp and now comfortably sits at level 27. Made a bit of progress with herbs and alchemy, and also got the fish finder book and leveling up all the secondary skills to the next rank. I also got my hands on another BoA trinket, so he gets to level with two nice shinies along with the shoulders. I'd like to get the mace or a staff next. I think I'll get the mace, because it has mana regen and crappy shadow priest is oom always.
Nenrax also burned through most of the rested xp, sitting just a few xp shy of level 63. Minor progress on lock pick, but to date is at about 303 or so. I ran some pugs through Ramps and BF, got some new blues. Hopefully most of the classic zone gear will be replaced very soon.

Other alts. I still haven't completed decided what to do with Exxis. I think I may make him an herb/mining bot as a feeder for other alt crafters. Short term, the herbs and ore will help Nen and Rax level up and it will be easier to farm since he already has the epic ground mount. I think once Nen's JC is maxed, I'll drop mining and pick up Blacksmithing for him and once alchemy is maxed, I'll pick up inscription for Rax. The DK seems much more sensible to farm with comparatively speaking. This will take a long time to work on, so the key priorities are to get Nenrax to level 80 and well situated with JC first. Then I will switch him to blacksmith and Rax to Inscription and go on a mass farming exodus for both herbs and ore with Exxis. This would leave me without an engineer cept for "Charmie", but that is the least desirable of my profs at this time.

Reelacks has been a slow progress, but I did pick up the Wispcloak recipe and honored with SoH. He's definitely the down time toon for when the priest and rogue are resting and there's no Raiding to do with Xar.
Speaking of Xar, he's finally maxed at 450 with LW so any Ulduar recipe drops obtained can now be crafted. WooT!