Is Fandral's Flamescythe really worth it?

Ok, so we have all probably seen someone with Fandral's Flamescythe by now. A flaming cat hanging out in Stormwind or Orgrimmar, showing off their new look.  But is it really worth it? Is this weapon more then just a gimmicky weapon put in by Blizzard?  Lets examine the facts shall we...

Here is Fandral's Flamescythe:


Fandral's Flamescythe
Binds when picked up
Two-Hand Staff
1428 - 2143 Damage Speed 2.40
(744.1 damage per second)
+408 Agility
+611 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 85
Item Level 378
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 276 (1.54% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 265 (1.48 @ L85).

We also know that the unlisted trick to this weapon is that druids using it get a new fiery cat form.  Now, the stats are nice, very high and in the right spots.  The mastery on it is nice and the critical strike always helps.  But is this really worth going crazy to go after?

Well, if you like your fair share of PvP, another weapon in your grasp can be:


Ruthless Gladiator's Staff
Season 10
Binds when picked up
Two-Hand Staff
1190 - 1786 Damage Speed 2.00
(744.1 damage per second)
+408 Agility
+611 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Classes: Druid
Requires Level 85
Item Level 378
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 272 (1.52% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your resilience rating by 272 (3.44% @ L85).

or


Ruthless Gladiator's Pike
Season 10
Binds when picked up
Two-Hand Polearm
2142 - 3215 Damage Speed 3.60
(744.1 damage per second)
+408 Agility
+611 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 85
Item Level 378
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 272 (1.52% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your resilience rating by 272 (3.44% @ L85).


Now, you do lose out on the mastery on these 2 choices, but although mastery is a nice stat to have, it's not the top stat in most builds at the moment. You can always reforge to get some mastery back, but ultimately, the 265 mastery that the Fandral's Flamescythe gives you does not actually translate in to that much of an improvement.  You have to remember that 265 does not translate in to actually 265 more mastery.  It gets tossed in to the conversion tables like all other stats and then the correct amount is added to your stats.

Now, if you do not have access to or do not like to PvP, there is always "


Witch-Hunter's Harvester
Binds when equipped
Two-Hand Polearm
1614 - 3000 Damage Speed 3.50
(659.2 damage per second)
+361 Agility
+541 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 85
Item Level 365
Equip: Increases your critical strike rating by 241 (1.34% @ L85).
Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 241 (1.34 @ L85).

Ok, I know what you are going to say.  And yes, the ilvl and stats are lower.  But look at the big picture here and not the numbers on the polearm.  You are only losing out on 47 agility, 70 stamina, 35 critical strike and 24 mastery.  If you were to add these missing amounts to your stats you would see almost no change in your over all stats. For example, 70 stamina is only going to give you about 700 more health over all. In today's WoW, 700 health doesn't make a  ton of difference, or really any at all.

If you sit back and do that over all math and run that numbers in your stats, you can see that, unless the staff drops while you are in there anyways, it does not seem that Fandral's Flamescythe is the end all/be all of weapons in the game for druids at this point.  Sure the higher stats and ilvl numbers all make it the "best" weapon in game for druids.  But if you stand back and look at it for what it really is, the shine on it seems to die down and it's not really that awesome of a weapon.  Now if you want a weapon that will change you form, then this is simple the best for you.  I feel that this just isn't worth farming for.

If you have any questions or comments you'd like to make on this topic, please feel free to comment.  I will respond to any and all questions posted here.  If you like this or any of my other topics, please follow me. You can also find me on twitter @neosroar.

A few things that will make you a better tank. Part 3

Ok, when we last left off I was talking about playing the role of caster dps.  Some people think I'm completely off my rocker for saying that to be a better tank, you need to do everything BUT tank.  I have found that the best way to become a better tank is the ability to empathize with the other members of your group.  If you understand what they are having to deal with, it will always help you to be able to make a pull better, get a boss down faster and make the run go smoother.

On that note, Melee is next!

No, some tanks out there have done this.  Some have a melee spec and they go to town killing stuff.  HOWEVER.....they usually do it in their tanking gear and have no fear of pull off the tank.  This does nothing to make you a better player.  All this does is give you a bigger epeen and make you the group pain in the @ss.

So, as stated in the last couple of blogs, start up a new toon, I recommend a warrior as this class is perfect for this.  With a warrior,  you can't step back and cast a heal on yourself to pull your butt out of the proverbial fire (or real fire if you were standing in it, lol).  You will have to rely on paying attention and your healer to keep you alive.  Level to 10 and then jump on BGs.  This will give you the perfect place to learn to watch what is going on.  If you can develop eyes in the back of your head, you will have learned a skill that will make you a good dps and a great tank, extreme situational awareness.  This is a skill that you will find a great number of people are lacking.  Even dps should know what is going on at all times with stuff in the room.

Once you hit 15, jump in to dungeons with both feet and learn new fun features such as "The tank keeps him moving when he doesn't need to....I CAN'T HIT HIM!!!!"  or my favorite "Why does the tank keep turning him? I keep getting him by the mob since the tank faces him to me!  AHHHH!!!"  Watch closely at what your tank is doing and remember or even write down the things he/she does that drive you nuts.  Don't yell at them in chat, it won't do any good.  Just make a note of it and remember it.

So, now that you have played the roll of healer, caster and melee dps, you have a firm grasp on what the other members of your group go through on a daily basis.  You know what they have to deal with trying to keep you alive and how the strive to keep themselves alive.  Remember, you are the tank.  It if your job to not just grab mobs and make fast pulls to show off your epeen.  It is your job to keep the group alive.  It is the healers job to keep you alive so that you can do your job.  This means do not be afraid to CC something or to make a LoS pull or to kill that extra group of trash so that it does not get accidentally pulled.  It's your job to keep them alive by setting up the run.  You are the first one in there and it is your job to set up pulls so that no one gets killed (there are some exceptions such as people standing in fire.  Cause you just can't fix stupid, lol.).  You will find that once you try this technique of playing all the different rolls until about lvl20 or 30, you will have much better understanding of the real group dynamic and you will become a much better tank for it.

I hope this has helped out.  I have done this and I can say that it gave me a lot of insight and makes my runs much smoother and with less repair bills.  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment below and I will respond quickly.  If you enjoy this blog,. please become a follower and spread the word about Neo's Challenging Roar!

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.

Who will be Cataclysm's big bad guy in the end?

SARGERAS.......

This name comes to mind time and time again as I take in all the lore and quests around me in the this expansion. Allow me to explain. There are several events that have happened so far in this expansion that point to Sargeras. 

First, the Twilight Cultists refer to "The Master" when they speak if the person in charge, even Deathwing himself has referred to "The Master". People have speculated that the "head bad guy" in this expansion could be the Old Gods.  I'm not so sure about that.  First off there is the obvious problem in phrasing. Simply put, Old Gods can not me "THE" Master.  But, if you were to take it down to just one of the Old Gods, then that would put them back in the running. But there is more information that pulls it back away form the old gods.

Next, what is the one race that stopped Sageras from coming through to Azeroth and were a main force in repeatedly stopping the Burning Legion over and over again?  The Night Elves.  What is one of the only places to actually take a massive hit in Cataclysm? The Park District in Stormwind.  Now, yes, he has destroyed mountains in the badlands and re trashed the dame in Loch Modan, but The Park District is different.  Deathwing swoops down, obliterates the Park District, roars around Stormwind for a minute or two and then leaves.  Does not kill or trash anything else really.  Sure he messes up the front gate area a bit, but nothing like sending an entire district to the sea. This is even spoken of by some of the guards in Stormwind.  If Sargeras was "The Master", then Deathwing would be acting under instructions from Sargeras and would even be working to make his master happy.  So taking out an entire area of Night Elves would be a good start.

Now, it is confirmed that we will be getting a new Caverns of Time instance. This in itself is not too big a deal until you find out that it is taking us back to the War of the Ancients. This is where the Burning Legion and Sargeras first start to come to Azeroth for its power and to take over and bring chaos to the world. Blizzard is literally bringing us back to the events that changed the world as we know it and the events that would lead to the Burning Crusade expansion. Seems a bit odd to go there if the head bad guy here is one or all of the remaining Old Gods.

Now, I know what some people are saying. Sargeras is dead. Medivh's mother killed him in the past and buried his body in the Maelstrom. And that his essence went in to her an then in to Medivh who was later killed by Khadgar. This is all completely true according to lore and what has been seen in game. However, when Khadgar killed Medivh, it freed his soul from the essence of Sargeras. This did not destroy the essence, it only detached it from Medivhs soul, freeing him. Secondly, His mother never killed Sargeras, she merely destroyed his avatar that was on Azeroth. He himself never came through and is still in the twisting nether.  With his essence still in Azeroth, he could have been spending all this time gaining strength again and quietly building up an army on Azeroth to do his bidding

One other thing that I noticed that seems odd, Deathwing went almost straight for Uldum and recruited lackeys to help him get the power of the Origination Machine that is there in Uldum, left by the Titans. Now, how could he have know everything about that machine, that is was there and how it worked and what he needed his lackeys to go after? Well, if your boss was a crazy, insane demon version of a Titan that was once on the good guys team and helped to create Azeroth, you would know about the Origination machine and how to use it. And since, assuming he has no physical form at this point, Sargeras would have to recruit a lackey of his own to get get stuff done for him, enter Deathwing, who is already nuts and would be easily susceptible to the power that Sargeras could offer him.

Kinda starts you thinking, doesn't it?  Well, keep in mind that this is all just ideas that I have though about for awhile now and could be completely wrong. But you never know, there are a lot of things going on that do seem to point to Sargeras.  We will just have to wait and see.

If you enjoy these blogs, please become a follower and spread the word about Neo's Challenging Roar.  Feel free to comment or ask any questions about this post int he comment section, I will respond to any questions or comments quickly.

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.

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!

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.