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.
Seeing WoW though the eyes of a tank.
Showing posts with label insane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insane. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
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!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
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!
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!
Friday, May 13, 2011
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.
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.
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