A few things that will make you a better tank. Part 1

After a few runs I have had in the recent past, I have decided to cover a few things that will make a tank a much better tank.  These are not your normal "get hit capped/more dodge/blah blah blah" stuff.  This will make you a better tank in that you will find that your runs will be smoother and nicer, which makes for a much better experience.  This will be a multi-part post that, by the end of the last post, you should have everything you need to make your life better in game.

The first this I recommend to EVERY tank out there is.......stop and roll a healer.  Yes, you heard me correctly.  Stop tanking and to roll a healer.  don't respec or dual spec and get a healing spec.  I mean start from square one and start healing.  Put all your points in healing as soon as you get them and then, at lvl10, Take off ALL your heirloom gear, replace the removed items with normal green/white items you can find and queue for BGs.  First, this will heal build healing skills.  Good healers learn that you can't just stand there and heal, there are times you have to heal and run as much as you can. This is easily learned in doing battleground.  A big orc warrior or little gnome rogue is not gonna let you just sit there and heal, you have to learn to heal and move to stay alive and keep people alive.  Stay with the group, the only way to learn good healing skills is to stay with the group and heal as much as you can.  Remember, don't get healer tunnel vision. This is where you are healing everyone so much, you forget to heal yourself.  This happens far more then you would think.

Now that you have leveled to 15 in battlegrounds, KEEP your heirloom gear off and queue in for random dungeons.  Now you learn some of the major tanking points in game.  You will now see how often a tank runs in for the next pull before you are ready and have mana back.  You will now see how often YOU are blamed for not keeping people alive, even though you were out of mana, siad you were out of mana but the tank went in anyway.  Here is where you will learn that healers are not supposed to loot ANYTHING, you are just supposed to keep up and heal.  You.....are a healbot.  You will also find some groups that the tank will listen to chat.  Will wait for you to get mana, will let you loot and will not go charging in if you have less them half mana.  Learning this all first hand, you will see what the healing classes go through in almost every run they get in to.

If you want to become a better tank, both for your sanity and for the good of the group (since running a dungeon/raid is a GROUP activity), you will do this until about lvl20 or lvl30.  It will only take you about 2 days to do this and you will learn just about everything you need to know.  Remember, you will not truly learn anything if you run to the AH and twink yourself out.  If you really want to do this, and I recommend you do, you will do it properly and do this in normal level appropriate gear.

My next blog will cover step 2 in becoming a better tank for you and your group.  When all is said and done, you will be a far better tank then you are now.  Trust me, I've done it.

Midsummer Fire Festival is upon us once again! So what's in it for bears?

I don't know about anyone else, but this is one of my favorite holidays in WoW, second only to Brewfest.  Not only is there a ton of gold to easily be made by simply going around to all the zones and honoring your factions fires and desicrating the oposing factions fires, but there is Lord Ahune!  Lord Ahune has been a giant loot pinata for several years now.  Although we now get the extra fun stuff form a scatchel once a day, we can still grind out this boss fight for a shiny new cloak.

This is a good holiday for an easy upgrade for tanks.  If you are a feral tank, you will want to keep you eye out for:


The Frost Lord's War Cloak
Binds when picked up
Back
604 Armor
+180 Agility
+270 Stamina
Requires Level 85
Item Level 353
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 137 (0.76% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your haste rating by 91 (0.71% @ L85).




Although it does not have the perfect stats, a nice back up to grab if you have not seen the War Cloak drop would be:



Icebound Cloak
Binds when picked up
Back
981 Armor
+180 Strength
+269 Stamina
Requires Level 85
Item Level 353
Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 143 (0.81% @ L85).


Although it does have strength on it, which will no longer be a desired stat for bears after 4.2 hit, it does still have nice stam and dodge stats on it. So if you see this drop, grab it if you can and just keep grinding for the War Cloak.  This way, if it doesn't drop, atleast you still got a rather nice tank cloak upgrade.



Lord Ahune also drops some items that would make a nice offspec addition. The Shroud of Winter's Chill:


Shroud of Winter's Chill
Binds when picked up
Back
604 Armor
+256 Stamina
+180 Intellect
Requires Level 85
Item Level 353
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 120 (0.67% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your haste rating by 120 (0.94% @ L85).


would make a great Moonkin cloak and the Cloak of the Frigid Winds would make an excellent resto cloak.


Cloak of the Frigid Winds
Binds when picked up
Back
604 Armor
+256 Stamina
+180 Intellect
+120 Spirit
Requires Level 85
Item Level 353
Equip: Increases your haste rating by 120 (0.94% @ L85).




The oddest weapon though is the Frostscythe of Lord Ahune.  Although  it does give spell power, it also comes with a ton of haste, critical strike and a whopping 700 stamina!  That's almost double what good tank staves have. This begins to make me think that if your stats are high enough, you could probably play around with this as a fun tank weapon, although I'd probably avoid using it in your next raid, lol.


Frostscythe of Lord Ahune
Binds when picked up
Unique
Two-Hand Staff
559 - 840 Damage Speed 3.20
(218.6 damage per second)
+700 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 85
Item Level 353
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 207 (1.15% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your haste rating by 207 (1.62% @ L85).
Equip: Increases spell power by 1849.
Use: Let the Frostscythe's chill flow through you. (1 Min Cooldown)


So take your time, have some fun and enjoy the next two weeks of Midsummer Fire Festival.  You can make easy gold and get some nice and fun upgrade here.  Maybe ever get taht elusive pet Frigid Frostling.

Can you live in BC again?

I've been seeing people talk lately about "retro-toons" and was curious as to what this was exactly.  It seems that there are people that are creating new characters, leveling them up to lvl70 and then.....*gasp*, capping their experience.  At first I thought this was a bit of a crazy idea.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had so much fun back in BC that it might be worth a shot.  So I leveled up a mage that I already had sitting as lvl62 and capped off my XP at 70.  It was at that point that I had a huge rush of flashbacks from when I hit lvl70 on my druid back in Burning Crusade.

My first stop, Isle of Quel'Danas! Time to start knocking out my Isle dailys again. The more I started doing some rep grinding in dungeons and with turn ins, not to mention beginning to gather some better gear through quartermasters and dungeons, I began to have more fun than I thought I would.  I figured it would be fun for a few days and probably lose it's interest, at which point I'd simply turn back on my XP and move on.  But it's been well over a week and I haven't lost any interest yet.  Maybe it's the fact that I know I can always turn on my XP and move on if I get bored. Maybe it the fact that Blizzard has, in the past, made changes to the over all stats in the game and even with the actual BC gear, I'm doing more damage now then I did then.  Who knows, all I know is that it's become so much fun, I have 5 other guild member that have decided to do the same thing. Next thing we know, we'll have enough people at lvl70 to run Karazhan with all 70s, lol.

I must admit, it's has been really fun.  Running some Cataclysm raids on my level 85 toons and then switching over and running dungeons and other stuff on my level 70 has been a blast so far.  I hope that it doesn't get old or boring any time soon. One thing we, the people in my guild that are going to have toons stay at lvl70, have decided is no twinking.  By this, we mean that you have to get gear from dungeons, heroics, raids, quests or quartermasters. Running battlegrounds to power through and grab all the super-high level PvP gear you can takes away form the fun of it and is somewhat frowned on.  1 or 2 pieces of PvP are ok, but full BG epics is a bit much.

If you have a level70 toon and are interested in having some fun on the Anvilmar server (Alliance side), cap that XP off and give me a pst.  Just whisper Taeo (my lvl70) or Neotaeo, if I'm not on then just whisper anyone in <DunderMifflin> and if they can't invite you, they will let someone know that can that you want an invite.  Come and have some fun, that is what retro-toons are all about!

A little about the blogger...

After handing out all this information about tanking and everything else I have covered in my blog, I though I should take a moment to give you a look in to where this wealth of knowledge (pffft) comes from. A little background on me, the blogger so you can maybe understand a little bit more about why I have the opinions I do and why I have taken it so seriously to gather up all the information I have obtained over the years and feel the need to share it with everyone out there that is looking for some help or maybe just a confirmation of what they were thinking.

I stated playing World of Warcraft back in early/mid 2006.  My first toon was......a mage.  I know, but I soon learned the ways of the tank side, lol.  After a lot of thinking about it, I grabbed myself a free trial of WoW.  I always loved the Warcraft games and thought, why not.  Man, I was not prepared for what I saw.  I started out as a human not having a clue as to what was going on.  didn't know what quests were, didn't know anything.  I wondered around in awe of the landscape of the game.  To me, the Elywnn Forest was amazing looking.  I Stumbled on Stormwind and didn't have a clue a I got lost (didn't know about hitting "M" for a map yet, lol). I found what I thought was a underground train that would take me around the city....WRONG!  I get off the tram and wonder around some more.  I finally find what looks like an entrance and.....I find myself in a high mountain peak, surrounded by snow.   I was shocked and in awe....and had to have this game!  I told my wife that she had to try this game out.  After all, she is the one that got me in to the warcraft games in the first place.  After she roamed around a bit, it was settled, we got a WoW account.

After about 6 months, I got a second account. Since I knew nothing about character transfers, I started a new toon..my druid Neotaeo.  My original reason for this was I liked the description of being able to cast spells AND heal myself.  Little did I know that in my leveling, I would learn how to change forms.  This was a big thing for me, I loved it.  The survivability of the bear form really kept my attention. Of course, I still had no idea what a tank was.  I wouldn't learn what a tank was until I got to about level 50ish.  By this time, My wife and I had seen the demon attacks on cities and discovered the upcoming Burning Crusade expansion. So with the coming of BC, I became a full on tank...kind of.  It was a steep learning curve and bears were looked down on even harder then ever in times after.

By the time I hit lvl70, I was the GM of my guild, tanking anything I could get in to and building up a guild group for dungeons.  I began to tank everything in sight, it didn't matter what it was or how hard it was, I tanked it ( or at least tried to).  I began to read up about feral tanking.  Back then, we still needed defense, although, we didn't not need as much as other classes.  This is when I found myself becoming all too familiar with 2 major things in BC.  1, everyone would rather take a pally in a group then a bear, and if there was no pally, they just would not go some times.  2, bears were stacking stamina (NOOOOOO!!!!!!).  It was at that point that I decided 2 things.  I was going to make a name for myself as one of the very few bear tanks on the server people would have no trouble running with.  And 2, I was going to do bear tanking against what most people were doing.  Almost everyone was stam-stacking and that did not make sense to me.  If you can get your dodge rating up high, you will take less damage and therefore need less heals.  By the end of BC, I was getting requests from some of the bigger raiding guilds on my server to tank raids like SSC, and Gruuls ( I made a lot of friends tanking heroic dungeons with people) and I was proving that stam-stacking was NOT the way to go, even if people didn't listen.

With the coming of Wrath of the Lich King, bears had changed.  We got rid of defense and got some nice AoE attacks.  This was like music to my ears, if we don't have to have defense, we can add more agility to our gear where we can.  Wrath however, caused problems that we would not understand until Cataclysm would hit. Tanks, bears included became lazy and impatient.  We would run in to a group, round them up and begin to hold everything, and it was not hard for us.  Even I fell in to the trap that was Wrath.  When Cataclysm hit us, we were in a world of hurt.  Tanks that were so use to running in and grabbing everything were dying very quick because Blizzard had brought back the need for crowd control (CC).  I know I found myself in a fix.  They had done major changes to bear that left us all but broken, but they also changed the rules of the game back to BC style mob pulls. I'll be honest, I hung up my bear suit for awhile after trying very hard to relearn how to bear tank.  But this gave me a good opportunity as I rolled a Death Knight for the sole reason of tanking.  I could learn form scratch how to tank in Cataclysm. Although I was now a DK tank, I still kept up on druid tanking and gave Blizzard my two cents worth of information and feeling on how they could change bears and make them more playable again. After all, it was at that point that bear tanks all but disappeared ingame.  We all felt the same way, and I'm glad that Blizzard listened.  With the big changes they did to bear tanks again, they brought us back out and in the main stream of tanking again.

So, I have seen and been through so many different incarnations of feral tanking and have done so much person trial and error for what works with bears that I feel that I need to share it with those that are either just starting out in feral tanking or might be thinking about it.  I share this with those that might be looking for some piece of information that confirms what they think. I even happily share my info with those that would argue against my points as I know that I don't know everything and there might be a different way of doing things that are better or easier at the time. For over 4 years now I have been the GM and main tank of <DunderMifflin> and I intend on continuing tanking until they shutdown the servers.

More changes for feral druids in 4.2.

In an earlier post, I went over a few of the changes we can expect to see in feral druids when 4.2 goes live.  With the PTR still up and running, the changes keep coming.  Here are the changes that we can expect to see at this point in time if 4.2 were to hit today.

Blizzard feels that bear damage abilities were scaling too fast with higher gear levels compared to other tanks, so they have made the following changes to try to balance out druids with other tanking classes (booo). Keep in mind that these numbers are all for lvl85 feral druids.

• Faerie Fire (Feral) base damage has been raised to 2950, up from 679. Attack power scaling has been decreased to 10.8%, down from 15%.

• Maul base damage has been raised to 35, up from 8. Attack power scaling has been decreased to 19%, down from 26.4%.

• Pulverize weapon damage percent has been decreased to 60%, down from 80%. Damage per Lacerate application has been increased to 1623, up from 361.

• Mangle (Bear) weapon damage percent has been decreased to 190%, down from 260%. Bonus damage has been increased to 3306, down from 754.

• Swipe base damage has been increased to 929, up from 215. Attack power scaling has been decreased to 12.3%, down from 17.1%.

• Thrash initial base damage has been increased to 1042, up from 339. Initial damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 9.82%, down from 19.2%. Periodic base damage has been increased to 581, up from 189. Periodic damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 1.67%, down from 3.26%. In addition, a bug was corrected where armor decreased the periodic damage done by this ability.

• Lacerate initial base damage has been increased to 3608, up from 2089. Initial damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 5.52%, down from 7.66%. Periodic base damage has been increased to 69, up from 16. Periodic damage attack power scaling has been decreased to 0.369%, down from 0.512%.

• Natural Reaction damage reduction has been increased to 9/18%, up from 6/12%.

So lets take a look at the information they have given us.  Overall, they are giving us rather large increases in initial damage done. In the area were we normally see our attacks scale up quickly, we will be seeing it slow down a good deal.  Now I know that some people are already freaking out about this. "They are nerfing us again!  Why does Blizzard hate feral?".  This could not be farther from the truth.  First off, they are probably tired of hearing the other tank classes complain that we are becoming insane as a tanking class.  Feral has always been looked down on and since the drop of 4.1, we have been coming back with a vengeance.  Second, if you look at the stats they are showing us, you will most likely not really notice any significant changes while tanking, in either lower level content or in current raiding content.

The only real change we might notice is from Natural Reaction:

• Reduces damage taken while in Bear Form by 18% (was 12%), increases your dodge while in Bear Form by 6%, and you generate 3 Rage every time you dodge while in Bear Form.

Any time we see an increase in damage reduction in the feral class, this is a big thing.  We already have a large about of damage we do not take through our avoidance (agility/dodge rating), so any amount of damage after that will now be reduced by 18% at the top end.  Lets put this in hard terms.  If you get hit for 47,000, after Natural Reaction kicks in, you will have only taken 38,540 worth of damage.  That's a pretty big number. Before the change, you would have taken 41,360 worth of damage.  That to me is a significant change for the good.

All in all, I'm interested to see how these changes play out in the long run.  Regardless of how the changes affect feral tanking, I know that I for one will not give up and still go out there and show those other tanking classes how it's done!

Remember, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment below.  I will respond to any questions quickly.  If you like this blog, become a follower and spread the word about Neo's Challenging Roar!

Battle of the tank: which class is the best tank.

Ok, so you all have seen trade chat or even had conversations with guildies or friends on this subject.  Everyone in game knows that this has been a heated topic for years and will continue to be as long as the WoW servers are up.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have probably just started playing or been living under a rock.  What is the question?  Here it is, which tanking class is the best. We all hear the tank of paladins being on top.  At the moment, some say it is Death Knights that are the best tanks.  Here, I will answer this long asked question once and for all.

The best tanking class is:  Feral Druids.

Ok, just kidding.  Actually, there is no one answer to this question.  No matter what people may say, there is absolutely no one tank designed to do it all and do it perfectly. Blizzard just did not deign the tanking classes that way, and for good reason.

So, let me explain why this is.  First off, if one tanking class was perfect at doing it all, there would be absolutely no reason to have any other class as a tank.  If DKs were perfect, pallys, druid and warriors would all be obsolete.  Second, by having tanks that are better in one are and worse in others, it not only gives a variety for a player to choose to fit his/her play style, but this opens up the door for Blizzard designers to make mobs, bosses and everything in between different from each other.

For example, if a paladin goes in to tank a raid boss, he will do fine assuming that the player knows his class and how to play it.  Now, if the boss happens to have a mana drain ability, the paladin will find himself in trouble since he uses his mana pool for a good portion of keeping aggro. Here is where other tanks come in to play. Any other tanking class that is the second tank can step in and take control of the boss since they do not worry about mana.

For another example, send a warrior, DK or paladin tank in to a fight and they get disarmed, this will pose a large issue, as attacks tend to require that weapon to be in hand. How do you solve this?  Send in the bear.  You can’t disarm a bear tank.  For feral druids, weapons are nothing more then “stat sticks” and are not actually needed to be able to attack.

Now there are many many more examples I could go over, but I think you get the point. Each tank is designed to be able to deal with at least 1 situation far better then any other tank class. It is one of the many ways Blizzard keeps the door open for them to be more and more creative with boss fights.

Below I have put together a little diagram of where some of a tanks strong points are and some of the weak points are.  Now keep in mind that this in a normal situation and this does not cover every pro and con.

Warrior Tank: Good at single target tanking as they build up threat quickly in that aspect. They have very good mitigation and damage reduction abilities. However they can struggle generally with AoE tanking so this class would need to work harder to keep aggro on multiple mobs

• Warrior Pros: Shields give a large addition to damage mitigation. Can recover quickly from a knock back with the use of charge. Can use Rallying Cry to temporarily increase the groups health if a fight starts to go wrong.  Is totally immune to mana burn since the class does not use mana. Can switch in to berserker or battle stance to dps in a one tank raid boss fight.

• Warrior Cons: If disarmed, makes it almost impossible to generate threat. Must be careful of rotation so as to not run out of rage, no rage and you cannot generate threat.

Paladin Tank: Good at AoE tanking and have some very good damage mitigation abilities and self-heals. However, not as good at single-target tanking compared to all the other classes so you would need to have a good knowledge of a rotation designed for single targets.

• Paladin Pros: Shields give a large addition to damage mitigation. Great ability for initial threat on multiple mobs. If disarmed, can switch to spell casting even tough less effective. Rage is never an issue as the class uses mana instead. Gets a damage buff when dealing damage to undead targets.

• Paladin Cons: Knock backs are hard to over come with the lack of a charge. Mana burn will greatly affect the ability to hold threat on mobs/groups. If silenced, will not be able to use attacks/generate threat on a target.

Death Knight Tanks: Generally are also good at AoE tanking as well as good at single target tanking but do not have as much mitigation as the other classes. This forces this class to rely on spells that help to avoid damage or restore health more then other classes.

• Death Knight Pros: Personal anti-magic shell helps to avoid magic damage, Bone armor act as a bubble reducing over all damage until it is absorbed. Deathgripmana burn as the class does not use mana.

• Death Knight Cons: Does not use a shield and must make up damage mitigation in other ways. Being disarmed will cause a lack in threat generation. Knock backs are harder to over come as the class has no charge. Must carefully balance the use of runic power with available runes or you will end up sitting there waiting for the ability to use attacks.

Druid Tanks: Similar to DK tanks in that they can hold aggro well on AoE and single target tanking.  Damage mitigation and avoidance are much different for this class as they only have dodge to focus on instead of dodge and parry.

• Druid Pros: Large health pool and high dodge rate helps greatly in survivability. Immune to polymorph, mind control and mana burns. Has talents to reduce greatly the time feared and knock backs are over come by using charge. Can double as dps on a one tank fight by switching in to cat form.

• Druid Cons: Can be less healer friendly if dodge rating and health pool is not where it should be for content running. Must be careful to not run out of rage or tanking will be impossible.

With all this in mind, remember, trying to be the best tank in the game is a futile effort.  Don't try to be the best tank, be the best tank of your class.  This is a attainable goal where the other is not.  Good luck to all tank out here and keep up the good work.  After all, someone has to carry those lazy dps through places, right? (just kidding).

The power of the handy dandy addon....

If you have ever taken a moment to look over the addons on curse.com or wowinterface.com, you have probably been a touch overwhelmed by all the addons that are out there that are supposed to make playing easier in one way or another. With all the addons out there, what are some of the better addons for tanking and all around playing? How do I pick an addon?  How will I know if it's any good?  These are all valid questions, questions that I hear from guildies all the time. I have taken a my current tanking UI and will break it down as to what I use and why.  Maybe this will inform you of an addon that you have been looking for.  Maybe you don't run addons and wanna know how they work.  This should make things a bit clearer. Here is a screenshot of my current tanking UI:

click image to see a bigger view

Ok, now lets break this down in to its parts.  Below is a key.

click image to see a bigger view

1) BasicChatMod: This is a nice little addon to clear up your chat window.  It's also nice if you are lazy like I am and hate having to constantly type /o to talk in officer chat.  Once you enter a chat channel, you stay there until you enter a new one.

2) Bartender4:  This is a very nice way to organize your buttons and make things smoother and easier to organize.  Place any number of action bars anywhere on your screen.  Also allows you to move around your bags, menu bar and everything else.

3) Skada:  This is a nice alternative to Recount.  It will show you any information about the fight from dps to threat to CC broken and so on. Can be set for current fight or over all.  Since 4.1 dropped, I had nothing but trouble with recount, since I switched to Skada, I've never been happier with a meter since I used DiamondThreatMeter back in BC.

4) SexyMap: This is a nice addon that allows you to move your minimap to anywhere you wish.  It also allows you to give it a nice custom look, far nicer then the standard minimap.

5) Raven: This is a buff/debuff display addon.  You can create and move bars that show buffs, debuffs, timers and lots of other things.  Very handy in helping to keep your UI clean.

6) TitanPanel:  This is a nice little bar that sits at the top of your screen, it allows you to display brokers (addons that show things like gold, durability, latency, ect.) and make things far more organized and easier to see at a seconds notice. On TitanPanel, I currently run:

• Currency - This will let you list right on the panel all your currencies, from gold to tokens to points.  Also lets you see what you have on other toons by just hovering over it.
• CPU - Let you see what addons are running and how much memory each one is using. This is a great tool, if you are having lag issues suddenly, you can hover over this and see what is going on. See if an addon pulling more then it should.
• DurabilityInfo - The name says it all, lets you know your current gear durability.
• Volumizer - This allows you to adjust the volume for everything ingame.  No more having to go in to the sound menu and changing stuff for you.

7) TomTom: This is a simple coordinate addon.  It does have nice features such as you can place a "pin" on the map anywhere and you will get an onscreen arrow that will point you the way and how far you are away.  Arrow also works for quests that you are tracking as well as trying to find your way back to your corpse. 

8) DeadlyBossMod (DBM, not pictured): This is a must have to anyone running anything.  It gives you a nice heads up when bosses or mobs are about to do something you should really avoid/interrupt.  Also gives you timers for such things as boss enrage timers, time to next cast from boss, even battleground timers.

9) Altoholic (not shown): This addon lets you see what is on your other toons.  Now not just what they are wearing, but in their bags, bank, AH and you can also use it to look at your alts professions and even link them in chat without even logging out of your current toon. This is a very handy addon to have.

10) Addon Control Panel: This I HIGHLY recommend. This allows you to look at a list of ALL your addons, on or off.  You can turn some on and turn others off, click "reload ui" and POW! no more logging out to turn on or off addons.

11) CBH Viewer: This is what gives me the black gap at the bottom of my screen where all my stuff is.  This doe snot just give you a black area, it actually zooms the screen out, giving it a true widescreen feel to it.  this also allows you to see more and makes tanking a bit easier.

As you can see, I find that a clean UI is a huge benefit for tanking.  The more that you can see, the more control you have on a situation.  You will be less likely to be surprised by a stay mob walking around or miss that fire pillar until it hits you.

I hope these help out a bit and do you as much good as they have done for me. Remember, keep up the good work bears! We gotta show them how it's done!

Gemming and reforging feral tanks

One of the best things introduced in to WoW is being able to reforge your gear. Although a great tool, reforging is a bit of a tricky thing.  It fine tunes your gear, but the second that your gear changes, it becomes the first thing to change to rebalance everything. I have found through my time as a feral tank that reforging should go in the following order:


Expertise Soft-Cap > Hit > Dodge > Mastery > Crit > Haste

Now, lets make a couple of things more clear, this is the base diagram if you need EVERYTHING. Now, if you are at the expertise soft-cap and are hit capped, then you would start looking at dodge next.  Some will tell you that you need to only reforge in to dodge or some will say mastery. My experience has shown me that you will always get the best results by getting that expertise and hit up to where they should be.  Remember, if you can't hit them, you can't hold them and all the other stats seem to become meaningless. If you are not where you should be with hit or expertise, always reforge haste or crit in to the needed stat as these are the last stats you will ever need to worry about.




Gems are also a wonderful tool that Blizzard has given us.  It really can make all the difference if you add the correct gems to your gear.  Gemming should be done in the following priority:

Expertise Soft-Cap, Agility, Stamina, Mastery, Crit, Haste.

You might notice that hit is missing.  You should, as a general rule, avoid gemming for hit.  You can get this through gear, enchants or reforging. People will argue with me on this order, and I'm ok with that.  Everyone is allowed to have an opinion.  However, this order is what I have found works the best as a priority list. Remember, if you can't hit them, you can't hold them.  Secondly, you will have good amounts of stam on your gear as is, getting your dodge rating up should be the highest next priority next to hit and expertise. You won't need huge amounts of health if the mobs can't hit you.

Now the biggest discussion is always "should I got for the socket bonus?".  The answer is yes.....and no.  Let me explain, deciding on if you should go for the socket bonus is entirely based on your stats and what you really need. For example, if you are wearing:


Cuirass of Calamitous Fate
Binds when picked up
Chest Leather
1282 Armor
+120 Agility
+180 Stamina
O Yellow Socket
O Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +12 Attack Power
Durability 165 / 165
Requires Level 80
Item Level 245
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 90 (1.96% @ L80).
Equip: Increases your haste rating by 90 (2.74% @ L80).


As a tank, you will most likely be able to make better use of this chest by tossing in agility and stamina gems.  You could toss in some multi stat gems to get the bonus, but to be honest the +12 attack power is just very much to make it very useful to a tank as opposed to the stats you'd get some solid color gems and forgetting about the bonus.

However, if you had:


Assassin's Chestplate
Binds when equipped
Chest Leather
1669 Armor
+321 Agility
+512 Stamina
O Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +10 Agility
Durability 165 / 165
Requires Level 85
Item Level 359
Equip: Increases your hit rating by 173 (1.44% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 243 (1.36% @ L85).


You will every definitely want to put in an agility gem or expertise gem to get this bonus.  The bonus is a sizable plus in a a key tanking stat that it is worth getting.

I hope this helps out and answers some question.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment on here and I will asnwer them very quickly.


Remember bears, keep up the good work!  We have to show these other tanking classes how it's done!

What we can expect at this point for feral druids in patch 4.2.

Well, it would seem that so far on the PTR, Blizzard likes us.  There are not to many changes for feral druids.  In fact, it seems that most of the feral changes are going to affect cats more then bears. The official patch notes for the PTR 4.2 state:

• Ferocious Bite damage has been increased by 15%. In addition, its base cost has been reduced to 25 energy and it can use up to 25 energy, for up to a 100% damage increase.

• Mangle (Cat) damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 530% weapon damage, up from 460%.

• Ravage damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 975% weapon damage, up from 850%.

• Shred damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 520% weapon damage, up from 450%.
• Frenzied Regeneration's health bonus is now reduced by 50%.

• Swipe (Cat) now deals 600% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 670%.

• Glyph of Berserk duration increase is now 10 seconds, up from 5.

• Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.

Look at these notes, the changes to Glyph of Berserk and Omen of Clarity are the only ones that really affect bears at all, and both of these are changes for the good. 

•  First, I know that I'm not the only one that feels that getting an extra 5 seconds to really pound on mobs with Mangle is a good thing. Mangle does large amounts of damage and when you use Berserk, you hit 3 targets instead of 1.  How can this be a bad thing?  No way I can see, lol.

• Second, the change to Omen of Clarity is a great one. Omen of Clarity reads:

Your damage spells and attacks have a small chance to cause you to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the Mana, Rage or Energy cost of your next cast-time damaging or healing spell or offensive feral ability by 100%.

If specialized as a Feral Druid, Omen of Clarity will also have a chance to occur from your auto-attacks.

To add on to this timer is nothing short of awesome.  You now get more time to use this buff that makes your next attack cost no rage....ZERO!  I know that through my own experiences, it will in fact proc often from your auto attacks. Heck, I've had it proc just from changing in to bear form.  Come on, I get a free attack from the word go?  Thank you Blizzard, you must really like us, lol

The only changes that I am aware of that will be a change for some tanks is Blizzard making strength an undesired stat for us.  At the moment, 1 strength gives us 2 attack power.  This obviously has an advantage in threat since as you hit harder, you build more threat.  Blizzard wants us to focus more on stats like agility and get away form rolling on rings and other items that other tanking classes would use that have strength on them.  This is not a horrible thing they are doing.  Yes, some of us will be forced to make some changes in our gear, gems or enchants.  But with all the gear available in the game, and with the heads up you are getting now, you should b able to make yourself ready for the patch to hit.  The other is the changes to Frenzied Regeneration. Although this might seem like a large hit, but between glyphing in to it and the fact that it will still be a very viable resource in a pinch, I think that this will go almost completely unnoticed.

I'll keep you updated here on any ad all feral changes that come up on the PTR, until then...

Keep up the good work bears!  We gotta show those other tank classes how it's really done!

Nice people make for a great run!

I decided to queue up for the new troll dungeons today.  I figured, it's late, I usually get pretty good groups this time of night.  As usual, as soon as I queued up, I get in to Zul Aman.  This is a fun dungeon, even back in the BC days, I loved this place.  Can give you a bit of a pain, but as long as you have a nice group, it's always fun.  It was myself (bear tank), a warlock, rogue, DK and shaman healer.  We go in and head for the first boss of the night, Akil'zon.  The gauntlet run went pretty smooth, no deaths, which is always good.  So we go up and we charge the boss, the dps down the birds that carry off party members, everyone did their job nicely.....until the storm came up.  As soon as we get the storm, we stacked up and the rogue and DK get insta-death.  No one had a clue what happened, but we killed the boss and moved on, slightly laughing it off. The warlock was kinda pushing us a bit for a timer run, which we rushed off trying to go for it.  


We start killing trash on our way to Nalorakk.  We get to the last set of trash and....I took one step too close.  Oh crap!  No time to CC so we try to burn them all with me holding everything, ouch......dead.  1 mass rez later and we are ready to try it again, timer gone, but no big deal.  We CC and kill that trash and pull the boss, fight goes off smoothly and he's one shotted.


Now we take off and head for Jan'alai and we go to do the first pull, to which the shaman forgets his CC mark and the DK spaces out....wipe.  But again, no one makes a big deal of it and we come back in and do it right.  We get to the last trash pull before the boss and we get 2, yes 2 flame casters in the group.  so we sap, hex and fear 3 mobs and kill 1, then we kill the fear.  I then target the sapped flame caster and charge in, the one I ran past, the hex, comes to and 1 shots the healer, well, we know what happens when the healer is down. lol.  We come back in and the shaman explains that he did not rehex because he saw me going for the flame caster.  The lock informs him that there were 2 and that sap is usually hit before hex because hex can be done in combat.  "Ohhh, crap, sorry. I noticed the name and didn't watch the mark.".  We all gave him a "eh, no big" and continued on one shotting the boss.


We move on to Halazzi and have zero issues and one shot him as well.  Hit Hex Lord  with a snake and demon out...HEX!  BANISH!  SMACK BOSS!  Dead boss, we win, loot!  Went off like perfection.  Meanwhile, we have been chitchatting the entire run.  Just talking about the instance, the gear that has been dropping.  We had a couple of agility BoE rings drop and I won one of them.  "Awesome, and to think I almost bought that 20 mins ago!" which lead to chuckles and talking about loot they had gotten in here in the same sort of conditions.


We get to the last boss and it started off great, adds dead, killing boss.  He changes in to the lynx form and starts beating on my hard, but we're ok.  He spawns 2 adds, I pick them up and start taking a bigger beating, but we are still ok.  I suddenly get 1 shotted, no idea why.  "SHIT! how?" had no sooner popped up in chat then I get a BRez from the lock!  YAY LOCK BATTLE REZ!!!  I pop back up, flip in to bear, pop everything I have to help bring back health while healer is healing,  I round back up the boss and adds, to which we kill the adds and he then switches to the dragonhawk form.  Ok, we got this going very well, killing him, no one standing in fire.....rogue lags for a sec, and that's all it took to kill him.  Boss drops, we cheer and rez while looting.  It was like we had just conquered a raid dungeon, it was not that hard, but we were having that much fun.  The healer then tells me that Not only am I the only tank that he ever ran with that picked up the cat adds, but that held aggro on them.  To which I replied "Thanks!  I do try my best.  after all, it is kinda my job. lol.". 


We all grats each other on a nice ran and after a bout 2 mins of more chitchat about the run, we begin to go our separate ways, actually saying good bye to each other.  It just goes to show you, you can have a run with some "oops" and a few " awww crap, my fault" times, but if you keep in mind that it is just a game and try to just have fun with it, every run can be a great one. Everyone makes mistakes and getting mad and blowing up at people only makes it worse.  I simple, "no prob, we now know NOT to walk up and say "Hi" to the flame casters."  can bring on a couple of laughs and make the run go far more smoothly and make the game over all more fun.

We all like glowing things, the trick is to find just the right glow....

Enchants...

The very concept of enchants escapes some people.  You know you have seen them, running Bastion of Twilight or some other raid or instance.  You look them over just out of curiosity and.....not a single enchant to be seen.  The very idea of not having enchants is bazaar to me.  I never understood it, you are literally cheating yourself and your group.  With out them, you are simply lacking and you could be doing so much more.  Some say, "But was it 80 attack power really going to do?  Probably not much.".  And sure, just 1 enchants won't do much.  But if you enchant everything, you will see huge changes for the good.  Try it, you will see and become a believer.

Since this my blog and I like to cover tanks, we will just focus on tanking enchants.  I'll cover all classes of tanks with some basic enchanting lists.  Since I wanna keep this a bit shorter them my last few blogs, I'll link the enchants instead of listing what they do.  Lets begin with....



Helm

• Druid = Arcanum of the Earthen Ring 150g + Revered Earthen Ring Reputation
• Warrior = Arcanum of the Earthen Ring 150g + Revered Earthen Ring Reputation
• Paladin = Arcanum of the Earthen Ring 150g + Revered Earthen Ring Reputation
• Death Knight = Arcanum of the Earthen Ring 150g + Revered Earthen Ring Reputation

Shoulders

• Druid = Greater Inscription of Shattered Crystal 75g + Exalted Therazane Reputation
• Warrior = Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz 75g + Exalted Therazane Reputation
• Paladin = Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz 75g + Exalted Therazane Reputation
• Death Knight = Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz 75g + Exalted Therazane Reputation

Cloak

• Druid = Major Agility
• Warrior = Protection
• Paladin = Protection
• Death Knight = Protection

Chest

• Druid = Peerless Stats
• Warrior = Greater Stamina
• Paladin = Greater Stamina
• Death Knight = Peerless Stats

Gloves

• Druid = Greater Expertise
• Warrior = Heavy Savage Armor Kit
• Paladin = Greater Mastery
• Death Knight = Greater Mastery

Wrists

• Druid = Agility
• Warrior = Dodge
• Paladin = Dodge
• Death Knight = Dodge

Waist

• Druid = Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
• Warrior = Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
• Paladin = Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
• Death Knight = Ebonsteel Belt Buckle

Legs

• Druid = Charscale Leg Armor
• Warrior = Charscale Leg Armor
• Paladin = Charscale Leg Armor
• Death Knight = Charscale Leg Armor

Feet

• Druid = Major Agility
• Warrior = Earthen Vitality
• Paladin = Mastery
• Death Knight = Earthen Vitality

Rings (if you're an enchanter)

• Druid = Agility
• Warrior = Greater Stamina
• Paladin = Greater Stamina
• Death Knight = Greater Stamina

Shield

• Warrior = Mastery
• Paladin = Mastery

Weapon

• Druid = Mighty Agility
• Warrior = Windwalker
• Paladin = Windwalker
• Death Knight = Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle

As you can see, there are some differences and similarities as far as what the tanking classes need.  However, they all in fact NEED them.  To not have your gear enchanted, in my personal opinion, is wasting your time and the time of the others in your group.  If you can not afford to get the enchants listed, there are less expensive enchants that will work in their place until you can get the best for your gear. The stats of all these enchants put together will make a very large difference in how well you can do your job. 

Think of it this way, as you are charging in to grab a boss, you see the healer struggling to keep you and the group alive.  Now, you think back as you and the group are wiping that you noticed earlier that the healer had no enchants on his/her gear. Could that healer have had an easier time keeping the group alive had he/she taken the time to enchant their gear to get the best possible results?  You don't wanna be the one that causes a situation like that because you just didn't feel like it or never took the time.  Chances are, there is an enchanter in your guild that will be more them happy to help you out to get the enchants you need.  I know I help out my guildies all the time as well as a few other guild members.  If you wanna win, you gotta put your best foot forward, which includes......enchants.


Keep up the good work bears!  We gotta show those other tanking classes how it's really done!


If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment below. Follow me here at the Challenging Roar for all the latest post full of helpful tips, tricks and experiences

I don't believe in stam stacking. There, I said it, now lets move on.....

Ok, so let me be a bit more clear about the title, lol.  I've been a bear tank for a very long time.  I've seen bears go through major trends, on more then off, of stacking stamina over any other stat.  Many tanks will argue that by "stam stacking" it gives them a lot more survivability in raids and dungeons.  That having more health makes it easier on healers to keep them alive.  I feel that they could not be more wrong, and let me explain why I think this (please remember, this is what I have found, this is not hard facts, just what I think works better).

First, by stacking stamina, yes, you have far more health and it does in fact give the healers a lot more time to get off a heal before your health pool is empty.  However, healers, no matter what Blizzard or any forums posts say, have a need to keep your health bar as full as possible at all times in a fight.  By having a huge health pool, you are still taking large chunks of damage and thus, more mana is used to keep you up. This can be a very bad thing as healers can tell you.  Here's a little secret, *looks around to see if anyone is listening*, if healers run out of mana, you get no heals.  lol.

Ok, now, on the opposite end of this, if you stack other stats totally over stamina, you will have a much smaller health pool and thus make it hard for the healers to keep you up.  The trick it to find a nice balance of stats to make the healers life easier.  Remember, the best thing for a tank is to take your epeen and throw it away.  Epeens only end up causing problems, espeically for tanks and healers.  Now, the tricky part is to remember, you need to have some stats over any other stat regardless of how you feel.  Here is my breakdown of stats and the order I feel that should be dealt with.

Hit Rating - 961 or 8% hit  is needed for raid boss or 721 hit for heroic 5-man boss. That is the long and the short of it.  Now, I have found that there is leeway here. If you go in to a raid with 5%, you will notice a huge problem in threat, you won't produce enough.  If you go in with 7.5%, you will usually be just fine. But the closer to 8% you are, the more threat you will be able to generate and the happier your group will be.

Expertise - The soft cap is 26 expertise or 781 rating. This soft cap is a MUST!  I can't express this enough as I see so many tanks below the soft cap and pay the price.  What is the price you ask? Hit rating is great to hit the boss, but think of expertise and "The Force".  It allows you to predict when a mob/boss is about to dodge or parry your attack and allows you to counter act it and still hit him. Now granted that this is all just numbers in the system and there is no thought involved in the counter action.  However, as you can see, being able to not be dodged or parried will also help you to gain maximum threat generation.

Dodge Rating - This to me is far more important then stamina.  This is a major part of your avoidance/not taking damage.  The less damage you take, the happier the healers will be with you. Now, as I stated earlier, you should not focus solely on this stat as a way to be "WINNING!!!".  You will need to balance this stat with stamina.  I have however found through trial and error that this stat is a very good one to improve over stamina at first. I usually shoot for a dodge rating of atleast 30%, in bear form, before I start tossing in a few stam gems in my gear.  Now, your best way of getting dodge is to grab as much agility as you can.  Dodge just gives you dodge rating, but agility gives you 2 AP while in form, 1% Crit per 324.85, 1% Dodge (pre-DR) per 243.58.  So you can see that agility is a far more helpful stat then straight dodge.

Stamina - Stamina, this is what I consider to be a tricky stat.  Every tank out there will tell you that having a large health pool feels good, that it helps you to feel like you can do about anything.  This is totally not the case.  If you have a huge health pool and little avoidance/damage mitigation, you will likely drop like a sack of potatoes very quickly, no matter how good the healer is. Once I got my dodge rating up to 30%, I worked on getting my stamina up so that I had a health pool of about 138k health in bear form.  Now I know that this does not seem like a lot, but remember, the more you avoid taking damage, the less health you need to stay alive.

Mastery - This is a very good stat to work on next.  This is your damage mitigation stat.  This stats works with your Savage Defenses.

Savage Defense: Each time you deal a non-periodic critical strike while in Bear Form, you have a 50% chance to gain Savage Defense, absorbing damage equal to 35% of your attack power for 10 sec.).  

Your mastery for bears reads "Increases the damage absorbed by your savage defense ability by 32%. Each point of Mastery increases the absorb by an additional 4%.".  So as you can see, this brings a very nice amount of damage mitigation to the table.

Critical Strike - Crit, well, this is purely a threat stat.  The harder you hit them, the more threat you generate.  It's much like when dps have huge crits and you can see them climbing the threat meters quickly.  It works the same for you.  Although this is a nice stat for threat, it is the second to last you wanna work on.

Haste - This is a stat you DO NOT want. Any and all haste should be reforged in to dodge rating. For a tank, it's not how fast you can hit them, it's all about generating threat through avoiding damage and other attacks in your arsenal to generate the threat.

Now, through my personal experiences, I have found that if you follow this guideline, you will find that feral tanking will go far smoother then most would lead you to believe. Remember, avoidance is a huge part of staying alive, not just your health pool.  The more damage you can avoid/mitigate, the less damage you will take, the happier your healer will be and the more confident you will be since you will tend to find healers saying how easy you are to heal.

Next post I'll talk about the current tanking build and glyphs as well as enchants for tanking.

Keep up the good work bears and remember, we gotta show those other tank classes how tanking is really done!

Can we go?

So I queued up for a nice heroic run today after having several successful and fun runs (I know, can you believe it.) and I got in to Lost City.  I like this place, I like the pulls, I like the bosses and even the layout.  It's one of my favorite dungeons in Cataclysm.  However, there always ends up being 1 thing that makes a nice set of runs stumble a bit.  Today it was a frost DK that queued in a dps.  Now mind you, there is nothing wrong with them at all.  I like DKs, but this guy started off the run with a bang.  After he "accidentally auto ran" in to the first pull while the healer was still buffing up, the healer asked for a moment to turn off some addons due to bad lag.  No problem, I perfect the healer to be healing me when I need it, not 3 seconds after I needed it, lol.  So the healer goes offline to turn off stuff and about 5 seconds later we get, "This should not be taking this long." from the DK.  I though, wow really?  This from the person that pulled the first group with his/her face is now complaining?  After a couple more complaints about "how long this is taking"  which was only about 2 mins by this time, I kindly said "Feel free to bail if it's taking too long.".

OMG, you'd think that I just killed his family.  Starts talking in chat about how rude that was and whispering me about how rude I am and that that was totally uncalled for.  I responded that I was only being honest and if we were taking too long, then maybe he would be happier in a different group.  The hunter in my group then chimed in with "Well, impatience is rude as well.".  I love that guy, he's a good friend and guildie and doesn't usually say anything unless it is really deserved.  by this time, the healer has come back online, apologized again having to turn stuff off and was obviously a bit shocked what he came in to. I had to pst him to let him know that it was really not his fault, the DK was just out of line and no one else minded. Finally, we started back up and were on our way.

After 1 boss fight, the DK makes fun of the hunter and laughs at him because he lost a roll on a polearm to me.  My bud and I laughed about it abit in pst and just moved on.  But after the 2nd boss kill, the DK began to talk to us as if we had known him his entire life and were interested in everything he had to say.  He began talking about the nachos he was eating and other odd bits about his life and what was going on.  This totally through us off as a bunch of "????" started flying though whispers.  We get to the last boss and the DK dies almost right away from standing in the green swirls that usually mean "don't stand here or you die", you know, standard Blizzard meanings.  We down the boss and rez the DK while we loot.  No sooner is he up then he drops group.  not a "thanks",  "bye", "get bent", "you guys suck"....nothing.  At the very least, this gave me a great subject to put here in my blog.  I just don't understand people like this.  Starts off a total PITA and by the end acts like nothing ever happened and everything it happiness and light.  Talk about deserving of the "insane" title.

Ok, so where is the bears archaeology item?

I was going through the list of items you can make through archaeology in wow and I noticed something.  Besides all the really nice and fun items you can get, including a very awesome AQ style bug mount, I noticed there were tanking items on the list.  The 2 handed sword Zin'Rokh is an amazing Death Knight tanking weapon and the Extinct Turtle Shell is great for Warriors and Paladins.  So where is the great bear item?  Unless I am missing something, which is entirely possible, there isn't one. I was very disappointed about this.  Looks like for the moment, bears get the shaft again. However.....

Here is my idea to fix this.  Give us a weapon that will be perfectly suited for almost primarily bears.  A new weapon that will strike fear in the hearts of our enemies and cause people to write songs about us.  Blizzard, give us......The Scythe of Elune!  It has been lost to history forever, an amazingly powerful weapon used by druids ages past to try to help "lost" druids only to result in the formation of the Worgen race.  This to me makes it a perfect item for bear tanks.  Other races could in fact use it as hunters and a few others tend to like the same stuff bears do.  This would make it so that others could make use of the item which would make it a good archaeology item.  I feel that it is time to bring the Scythe of Elune back in to being, and what better way then through archaeology!

Bear tanks are back baby.....

So as many feral tanks can tell you, when we got patch 4.0, a lot of changes were made to bears. They removed the ability to spam swipe, which was great for rounding up lots of mobs, by giving it a 6 second cooldown.  This felt odd to me as I also had a Death Knight Tank and a low level pally tank.  Both of these tanks still had very nice AoE attacks that they could use, some in a short rapid fire style, while the bear lost its good AoE attack for the most part. They changed talent around in the trees and just generally made it a totally different game for feral tanking. Sure we were still bears and had large health pools, but so much had changed that a lot of us felt that that's all we had going for us.  Many I had talked to then and now, as well as myself, felt that with all these changes and after trying to make them work for some time, felt it was time to hang up the tank gear and play a new spec.  Most seemed to go in to the balance tree while there were some that went in to the resto tree (lol, resto tree.).

But, with the coming of patch 4.1, feral tanks got a few needed changes.  One of the more notable was swipe, Blizzard dropped it's cooldown from 6 seconds to 3.  This might not sound like much, but with Thrash, a second AoE attack still on it's 6 second cooldown, this gave us a nice stagger to any need to use AoE hits to hold stray mobs.  They also did a major overhaul to our damage mitigation mechanics as stated in the official 4.1 patch notes:

"Savage Defense has been redesigned slightly. Instead of a single charge absorption, it now places an absorption effect on the druid absorbing up to 35% of the druid's attack power (modified by mastery, if applicable) in damage and lasting 10 seconds. There are no longer any charges on the effect."

To me, the charging effect was a real pain.  With this new setup, it makes it nice ans smooth and, as most healers will say they like it, predicable.  Giving the healer predicable about a damage incoming is a good thing as is reduces the amount spiky damage and the amount of "OMG, I CAN'T HEAL FAST ENOUGH!!!!" situations.

I think I can speak for most druid tanks when I say thanks you Blizzard for listening to us.  We love being bears, we love getting smashed in the face as we protect our groups.  We really missed it and I for one and very glad that we got some changes made to the spec which gives us a more viable feel and place in the tanking world. As many people I know have noticed, bears kinda dropped off the face of Azeroth shortly after the big changes took place.  However....

Bear tanks are back baby!!!

If you don't know, just ask.

So I'm sure you have all had this situation happen, probably in the same place too.  I get in to a group for H Blackrock Caverns, not my favorite place but not too bad (just glad it wasn't Grim Batol).  Kill the first trash, down the first boss pretty easy.  All is going nice and smooth.  We kill the next trash, still smooth.  Now we are at the next boss.  I have the rogue block the middle beam, feral druid block the right and mage the left while I tank the boss between the rogue and druid cat.  I always make sure to ask "Everyone know what to do with their target?" to which the healer replied "Ummm, heal him?" ( I love a touch of comedy in a run, lol). I got a yes across the board so  I made the pull and everyone jumped in to position quickly.  Interrupting the fear and doing good so far......until the druid turns in to a giant freakin mob bent on killing us, followed by the rogue.  Ok, we all come back in, rebuff and remark the mobs.  I charge in, position the boss........giant freakin mobs, again.  Come back in, rebuff, remark, charge in......HUGE BEAR KILLING MOBS.....AGAIN!!!!!!   After every wipe, there are a ton of excuses from "I don't know what happened, I was right there." to "I was feared" (which could account for 1 mob, not 2).  So we come back in and I, as nicely as I can being as how the cat was a guildie of mine and having the GM going off on you is usually a bad thing, I like to keep it down as much as I can, say, "ok, just so we are all on the same page, block beam until you get 70-80 stacks of debuff, get out of beam, wait for debuff to tick off, get back in beam, rinse & repeat.".  Everyone says "ok", so we rebuff and I remark.  I make sure everyone is ready and then I charge in as I have done for several tries.....and what do you know, we down her with no effort at all.

Look people, if you don't know the detail of a fight, just ask. If you are afraid you will look dumb because you don't know, you will look even worse after you have killed you party members. People don't mind filling you in about the details of a fight, not everyone has done them all.  But people get a bit mad having to spend gold on repairs that could have been prevented had you just said something, not to mention wasted gold on any food, pots or elixirs that were used and wasted on a fight that ended in death due to lack of knowledge. So please, for the love of all that is good and right in this world.....

If you don't know, just ask.

It's called a "minimap".

So, I took a break from tanking for a night and played my arcane mage.  I love this toon and love all the buffs that they have given us in this latest patch (thank you Blizzard).  But I have noticed a pattern with some tanks that, as a person who normally plays a tank, I just don't understand.  Let me paint a picture for you so you can see exactly what I'm talking about....

The group engages a boss and, due to most people not ever having been on that fight, the group wipes.  No big deal, everyone releases and starts to come back in and meet up at the boss.

Tank: ready?

Hunter: r

Mage: r

Death Knight: r

Tank charges in and......wipe.

Tank: WTF?

Hunter: What happened dude, you got one shotted.

Tank: Healers fail

Healer: I wasn't even in the room. Did you see a "r" from me? No, you didn't.

Tank: WTF NOOB!

*Tank leaves party*

Ok, now lets point out a couple of problems with this entire situation.  First off, the healer was partially at fault as he/she could have said they weren't ready.  HOWEVER, the tank did notice the "r" from everyone else and I'm assuming that he/she can count that there were only 3 "r" responses.  Which would be that 1 person was not ready, so why pull.  If you are not sure if they are or not, you can just ask, it won't hurt or burn to be nice and ask, lol.  Next, there is a simple thing in game, even addons to make it far more customizable, that makes this entire situation really a tank fault problem.  It's called a "minimap" and it sits on everyones screen displaying where all people in your group are at any given time.  If you ask "ready?" and you see that one of the dots on your minimap are not where you are, then someone is not ready.  It really is as simple as that. I have been seeing this kind of thing alot with tanks when I play dps and I just don't get it.  

Come on tanks, you are giving the rest of us a bad name. A tank is supposed to have full situational awareness of what is going on around them in order to do their job, but if you fail to watch your minimap to see if everyone is there for a pull, it is not much different then going in to a pull with a healer out of mana.  It causes undue stress and strain on the group and usually leads to wipes and people leaving the group.  And since everyone wants to have a nice smooth run, just please, join the rest of us and pay attention to eveything around you.....even your minimap.

Do they really think "gogogogo" works?

Ok, we've all seen it, we've all know people that do it to some degree, so here is my question.  Do people really think that chanting "gogogogo" at the tank is gonna make us move any faster?  I can tell you right here and now.....No, it won't.  If anything, it'll make us slow down.


Here are a few key things that dps NEED to realize about tanks.

1: Tanks don't wanna die.
2: Tank want to keep healers happy.  Happy healers = better heals (generally speaking)
3: We all know that mobs do different things. Part of a tanks job is to set up a pull so that it is easy to round up mobs or set up for any needed CC to keep the healer from burning through mana and keep people from dying.
4: If we were just in a large group fight, chances are we popped a cooldown.  If we are just sitting there, we might be waiting on it to cooldown or maybe to let a taunt come off cooldown.  If this is the case, we aren't moving until it does.
5: And this is a big one, WE WATCH HEALER MANA!!  If the healers mana is low, I can guarantee you that we will not move until the healer has mana again.  Why?  See item #1.


Also, if a dps uses the "gogogogo" method to get a tank to go, and he/she doesn't move, pulling for the tank...well.....lets just say more times then not you will find yourself back in queue for a tank.  Which these days, if you are looking for a tank for your run, you'll be waiting awhile.


If you just wait and let the tank go at his/her own pace, you will find that you will have a much nicer, smoother and more productive run.  After all, which takes more time, a tank that goes a bit slow and you one shot everything?  Or a tank that is rushed, makes a couple bad pulls (or the dps does) and you wipe a couple times, wasting time running back in and to where you left off?  Hmmmmmm?  (Pssst, here's a hint.  The second one will take longer.)


Keep this in mind next time you run a dungeon and spread this information around and who knows, maybe you will see more tanks coming back out to play more often.