Going for my Rusted Proto

Among the various things we've been doing in our guild to help pass the end-of-content times is running a small group to try and get our Rusted Proto-Drakes from Ulduar 10.

A couple weeks ago a group of 10 of us started from scratch. In 3 hours we managed to knock off the first 10 boss achievements, leaving only Mimiron, Vezax, and Yogg. There were a couple wipes here and there (some intentional because we messed up the achievement), but it was a good night overall and I was really happy with our progress.

Yes, we massively outgeared everything, but there's still an element of execution to some of the fights that no amount of gear can help you overcome.

On Sunday night we picked back up and headed in to try and get the last 3.

Mimiron spanked us for 2.5 hours before we finally called it. We were getting close. On our second-to-last attempt we had gotten to phase 4, killed the VX-001 (body) unit, had the ACU (head) at 2%, and the MKII (feet) at 1% before the self-destruct took out the remaining members of our group. I fully suspect we needed about 5 more seconds to get it done.

It was frustrating, but only because I think I went in there expecting to pretty much waltz through everything except Yogg based on our first night of tries. I know people have said that Mimiron's hard mode may have been the hardest encounter in the game short of Yogg+0 and (later) the LK encounter. I guess now I see why. It's pure chaos. There's a steep learning curve in managing it.

Once I get my Rusted, I'm half tempted to see if I can buy a run for the Ironbound. Short of the Frost Wyrms from ICC, it's the one mount in the game I've absolutely had to have since the moment I saw it. But given the nature of my guild, I don't expect to be getting it any time soon through those means.

Then again, maybe we should try. I guess there's no harm in it...

I did it again

I was stuck at home today due to some doggy issues (she's fine, but needed to keep an eye on her for the day) and unable to log into work due to some other circumstances. In order to assuage my guilt over the combination of these facts, I decided to forego being lazy and spent most of the late morning and early afternoon finally putting together my Abom driving video of the Professor Putricide encounter.



This one was a lot harder than the Halion vid I did a few weeks ago. There was a lot more information I needed to convey and, therefore, a lot more places for me to stumble over my words and have to try again. The Halion video had 3 distinct voice recordings put together. This one has over a dozen.

Still, it was fun. And it taught me a lot that I'm going to have to remember if I want to keep doing these kinds of vids in the future.

This is probably the last "guide" type movie I'll be doing in the Wrath era. But depending on how things go, I may try to pick up in Cata.

BA Shared Topic: Mementos

Wow...haven't done one of these in a long time...

This week FeralTree asks "What items or mementos have you kept (in your toon's pack or bank) and why? Whether it be keepsakes, quest rewards, special items, random drops, whatever! - why did you decide to hang on to it? What's its significance to you?"

I'm a packrat by nature. I hate letting go of things, even when I'm fully aware that they'll never be used or looked at again. This isn't just in regards to WoW. Everything in my life is that way. I have enough sense of self-preservation that I can muster up the will to go through stuff and get rid of it before it gets bad, but that's still usually well after the time that it should have been done.

In WoW this means that, about once a year, I'll finally manage to go through my bags and my bank with an indiscriminate eye and toss away everything that's absolutely useless.

The one thing that I'll never get rid of, though, is my T4 set. Those 5 pieces have a permanent spot in my bags.

TBC was released in February of 2007. I didn't get Saniel to level 70 until Christmas day that year. I was in a guild at the time, but on any given day, me and Norfin (I figure I can start using a name and stop referring to him as just "my partner") were the only two people online. There were others from time to time, maybe. I don't recall. Either way, it was unimportant.

A couple weeks later I decided it was time to start figuring out this raiding thing. I knew I needed to gear up in order to start raiding and I knew that heroics were the best way to do that. However, I didn't have a steady group to run with, and I'd had nothing but horrible experiences with PUGs in the past (both just trying to get into one and then the actual runs) so I wasn't keen on that route, either.

Instead I spent months grinding Honor in BGs until I was decked out in a full Epic PvP set.

Then I started applying to guilds.

At the time I didn't understand that PvP gear was mostly useless in PvE content. I had little or no concept of most group mechanics. I didn't understand about hit caps and the importance of being uncrittable, and how druids were supposed to gear.

I knew that, as a Feral, I was going to have to tank if I wanted to raid. Kitty DPS was still a joke. But I'd only ever really played as a cat to that point. I didn't know the first thing about tanking.

Note that, by this time, it was Spring of 2008.

Eventually I did find a guild of good people that ran raids on my schedule. They took me into some heroics to start replacing my gear with more appropriate stuff. They took me into Kara as an OT and helped me learn the ropes. I also scoured the net and started researching on my own what I needed to be looking for and doing.

Before too long Kara was old hat. I was basically part of a farm team.

We wanted to move on to try Gruul and Mag, but didn't have the numbers until we formed a guild alliance with my current guild, <The Dragons>.

Over the next few months we survived membership swells and droughts. We went from long nights in Gruul's Lair to quick, reliable kills, down to having to gear people up in Kara and back up again. The guild I was in faltered and the people that remained merged into The Dragons. At some point along the line, I became a raid leader.

There was drama and frustration a-plenty.

There were weeks and weeks and weeks of unsuccessful Magtheridon attempts. Sometimes it felt like we were getting close. Sometimes it felt like we couldn't be further away from victory.

A week (maybe two) before 3.0 dropped and nerfed the hell out of all the BC raids, we finally killed Mag. The last token I needed dropped and I managed to win it. I got full 5/5 T4. Tokens of my kills of the 5 milestone bosses of that tier of raiding. And my "Champion of the Naaru" title.

I keep that set because it represents the huge strides I made in a relatively short amount of time. Also because I still believe it's the best looking Druid set to date.

On gemming your bear tank (Stam vs Agi)

Gemming (and, to a lesser extent, gearing) a bear tank is somewhat of an interesting topic. After making sure you've met the hit cap and at least the dodge expertise cap, there's basically 2 schools of thought on what's important for bear tanks.

1. Stam, stam, and more stam!
   
2. Stam and Agi.

The first group of people are carry-overs from the BC days of Bear Tanking. Their view is that we are soak tanks. The idea of a bear was to take those punishing hits and just absorb them with our absurdly high health pool. To help us out, we had an absurdly high armor multiplier that put us way ahead of plate tanks in the area of mitigating the blows that did land.

Since then, a lot has changed for bears. Our health and armor multipliers have both been significantly reduced since pre-3.0 days (via nerfs to Heart of the Wild and Thick Hide). It's still not uncommon for us to be a little bit ahead of equally-geared plate tanks in those areas, but it's not by much. Certainly not by the margins we were used to.

To help us out, we got Savage Defense, which is kind of like Block. The mechanic is different: if we're not attacking something, we're not getting use out of it (which sucks when your job is to hold threat on something, but not kill it.) But at it's core, it's the same basic idea.

This is where the second camp comes in. Those who go for a balance between stam and agi. It's important to note here, what we get out of Agi as bears. Agi gives us Armor (mitigates damage taken), dodge (avoidance), and crit (Savage Defense procs). So yes, we may have less health than if we went straight stam, but we get quite a bit in the trade-off. And all of that other stuff is very important to bear tanks.

Like I mentioned above, stam stacking was the way to go in BC for Bear tanks. When we took the hit to our armor multiplier, people reasoned that stacking stam was even more important. When Chill of the Throne hit in ICC, there was argument that stam was even now more important.

It's an argument I just don't buy.

When people say that talent buffs and raid debuffs are hurting our chance to avoid or mitigate damage, and thus we should stack more health, what I hear is this: "I'm used to having water and food. But I'm having a lot of my food taken away. Rather than do what I can to get some of that food back, I'm just going to drink more water. In fact, I'm going to try to live off water alone and treat any food I do manage to get as a bonus."

That doesn't sound like a very good way to live.

Yes, there are always exceptions. All the Agi in the world isn't going to help you on fights where your chief source of damage comes from magic or bleeds. But all the Str, Block, and Parry in the world isn't going to help the plate tanks in those situations either, so it balances out. There are times when a heavy stam set is the way to go. I just don't believe they're meant to be the norm for bear tanks any more than they're meant to be the norm for plate tanks.

Now, don't get me wrong here. EJ supports claims that heavy stam stacking for bears in a legitimate strategy. It's also worth noting that looking at bears from several of the top ranking guilds in the world supports stam stacking (as they go with method). It still doesn't fly with me. It's forcing Bears into a former niche role that isn't always valid anymore.

If Dodge were the only thing we got out of Agi as bears, then I would be tempted to switch sides in this debate. The diminishing return on Dodge coupled with things like Chill of the Throne would definitely drive me towards stacking more stam. But with Armor and Savage Defense procs also factoring into the equation, it seems like a too-narrow view.

Now, more than ever, the stat meta-game of WoW is all about balance. Give and take. A little of this and a little of that. Don't sacrifice too much of any one thing in favor of something else.

Classing up the joint

You'll have to excuse me for this one...I've been having a hard time coming up with ideas for posts this week. Like, any ideas. Even ones to reject.

This morning on my way into work it suddenly dawned on me that, come Cataclysm, Taurens will have the distinction of being the only race with access to all 4 tanking classes.

Then I realized that they also would have the distinction of being the only race with access to all 4 healing classes.

So could you get by with making an all Tauren raid team? Well, you could. But you'd be pretty short on caster DPS. Tauren's won't have access to either pure DPS caster class (Warlock and Mage). So you'd have to make due with Ele Shamans and Shadow Priests. You'd also be locked out of Rogues, making Hunters your only pure DPS class.

This whole thought process got me thinking about all the race/class combos in Cataclysm and what kind of other fun facts are hidden in there.

• Warriors and DKs are the most open class, both being available for every race.
  
• Hunter, Priest, and Mage are all close, each with representation in 11 of the 12 races.
  
• Druid is still the most restrictive class, only available to 4 races (NElf, Worgen, Tauren, Troll).
  
• Paladin, Shaman, and Warlock are the next 3 most restrictive classes, with representation by 5, 6, and 7 races, respectively.
  
• No race has access to every ranged DPS capable class.
  
• Goblins are closest, missing only Druid.
  
• No race has access to every melee DPS capable class.
  
• Dwarfs are only missing Druids.
  
• Tauren are only missing Rogues.
  
• Humans, Dwarfs, Worgen, Trolls, BElfs, and Goblins each have access to 8 classes.
  
• Everyone else has access to 7...
  
• ...except Gnomes, who only have access to 6.
  
• The only races that can't be Rogues are the two with hooves.
  
• Gnomes' only healing class is Priest.
  
• Orcs' only healing class is Shaman.
  
• Humans and BElfs are the only two races that mirror class options.
  
• Alliance has access to 44 race/class combinations.
  
• Horde has access to 45.
  
• Of the 89 combinations, 29 wear plate, 29 wear cloth, 17 wear mail, and only 14 wear leather.

Any other fun facts I'm missing?

(This should help.)

(Un)forced raid progression

...or "Why Kara was awesome, Naxx was awesomer, and the pros/cons of Emblem gear."

Wrath has been a very interesting raid cycle for my guild. A vastly different experience from BC, to be sure.

As I've stated before, anyone in the guild is welcome to come along on our Fri/Sat 25-man runs. This has been our policy all the way through Wrath. Our 10-man runs during the week tend to be a little more selective.

As far as 25-man raids go, we were able to clear Naxx before Ulduar opened up, with just one extra weekend to spare for an attempt at Malygos (which was unsuccessful). We never got an Ulduar 25 team past Auriaya (though to be fair, we had a lot of attendance issues through that time and barely fielded any 25-man teams at all). We did clear ToC 25, but not until well after ICC was open (March). And in ICC we've been able to kill Rotface, Festergut, and the Princes, but it's a toss-up from week to week whether or not we'll be able to kill any or all of them. Halion is also still laughing at us.

A large part of this is due to a number of the people on our 25-man teams simply being inexperienced raiders. The situational awareness and speed of execution simply isn't there.

Rewinding back to BC, there was a solid progression. You did Kara before moving on to Gruul's Lair. Then you did Magtheridon. If you got past all those, you moved into SSC and TK. Beyond them was Hyjal. Then BT. If you were really good, you got to go to Sunwell.

That was it. Straight through. If you were a guild that was working on SSC and TK and had new members that wanted to raid they had to go through the T4 content first in order to gear up. (And I'm not even going to mention running those BC Heroics in order to get raid-geared.)

With our guild, it was a tireless battle of gearing people up through Kara to help us with Gruul and Mag, losing members, and starting the cycle over. We got finally got Mag a week before the 3.0 super-nerf hit (so a number of us earned our "Champion of the Naaru title).

Had we been able to bring people up faster when letting them into our raid groups, we might have gotten further. Maybe not. I don't know.

But there was one great thing about Kara. It taught people how to raid. All the basics were covered in Kara. Positioning, moving out of bad stuff, tank stacking, tank swapping, healing constant streams of damage, healing spikes, crowd control.

It was hard enough that it made a properly-geared, inexperienced group really focus on learning these skills. Otherwise they just wouldn't get far. It was also easy enough that an over-geared, experienced group could carry someone through enough that they still had to learn and perform, but weren't severely punished for their mistakes.

If you could routinely clear Kara, you had a group of 10 people that you knew were able to learn, adapt, and play smart. They had the skills to be a regular raider.

Fast forward now to the beginning of Wrath. Exit Kara, enter Naxx.

Naxx served pretty much the same purpose as Kara. It was the intro raid. The one that would teach new players all the skills they needed to be successful raiders far into the expansion.

Naxx was a little more forgiving than Kara. And that was okay. The idea of Naxx was to give even more people access to raid content, so the difficulty was toned down a little.

The other thing Naxx had over Kara was a non-linear progression.

In Kara there was a definite path: Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Nightbane, Curator, Illhoof, Shade, Netherspite, Chess, Prince. I'm over-simplifying and leaving out the finer details. But that was the basic path.

Naxx gave us something different. Four wings, each with 3 (or 4) boss encounters. And while it was true that you had to do all four wings to reach the final two bosses (Sapph and KT), you could tailor the order based on your raid. Military and Construct were definitely harder than Spider and Plague. So if you were working on progression and knew the first two wings were a breeze, you could skip right to the latter two and try to conquer them first.

It was a small degree of customization and allowed raid leaders to try and strike a balance between time and kills.

But, ultimately, we ended up in the same place as we did after Kara. A team that could regularly and reliably clear Naxx had the skills they needed to be successful raiders through Wrath.

But Wrath changed the game. All of a sudden with every new content tier that came out, we could use Heroics (which were easy mode by the time you were in Naxx gear, if not before) to gear ourselves right up to current content and jump in. Then enter LFD and, oh man. If you have the playtime, you can have have a fresh 80 ready to jump into ICC in 3 days. Maybe less.

In some ways this is great. It means a guild (like mine) with loose requirements and a regularly rotating raid group can stay on current content with relatively few issues. If we're working on ICC, we don't have to haul somebody through all 3 previous tiers of content to catch them up. And while doing that with one person maybe wouldn't be that much of an issue, doing it with 8 or 10 newcomers (which has happened before) would be excruciating and time consuming.

But then you get into the situation my guild is in now. You have these raiders who are running wild through ICC and RS and they haven't developed those key skills that a place like Kara or Naxx would have given them. And ICC and RS are very unforgiving to an entire raid group that has even a small number of people without those skills.

I'm not sure what the solution to this may be. I honestly don't even know what to propose as a solution. The easy answer is "something in between," but what is that, exactly? And how would it be implemented? I won't lie...I don't have any good ideas. I am going to be interested to see how raid tiers are handled in Cata.

I'm hoping that the early Cata raids function similarly to Kara and Naxx. I get the feeling that they're going to be like Kara on an individual level, but the fact that there's three of them is going to give us that Naxx style flexibility. It's also going to allow us to run different teams through different raids without worrying as much about lockouts. I'm excited for the possibilities.

Our guild numbers are very strong right now. If we can somehow find a way to keep the numbers strong through the early parts of Cataclysm, I think we'll be in good shape and none of this will even be an issue. Or at least as much of one.

If not...who knows. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Keyword Analytics!

So I'll admit it, I'm kind of stat counter obsessed. Every morning I check to see what kind of traffic my blog got in the last 24 hours, how the month as a whole is shaping up, where people have been coming from, and what searches are leading them to my blog.

This last is, at times, the most fun. A lot of it is pretty typical search keywords. Some things are just easy questions to answer. And then some things show up that are just truly...special.

Let's take a look at some...

how many stacs should i taunt in icc 10 saurfang normal
I think one person is hitting my site over and over with this one search term. Or (s)he's shared the google link with others. Because it's responsible for a fair chunk of hits and the bad spelling doesn't show up in Google's autocomplete.


See?

Regardless, the answer is 0...because there's nothing in this fight that stacks.

When you DO taunt is when the other tank gets Rune of Blood.

Stacks? Seriously? Unless you're thinking of Blood Power. But...yeah. No.

is primal precision needed bear tank
Needed? No. But unless you're over the parry/block expertise cap with gear, it is helping your threat. And if you're under the Dodge cap (6.5%) then you definitely want it.

icc 10 man stinky and precious when to taunt
Have the 2nd tank taunt when the first reaches 6 stacks or so. Then each tank should taunt back each time their stacks drop.

taunt lady deathwhisperer
I tried, but I couldn't get a word in edgewise.

dpsing festergut as a bear
Don't. Festergut is a DPS race and you need to be putting out as much DPS as you possibly can. If you're not getting enough stacks of Inoculation to easily survive the Pungent Blight (exhale) then you need to examine your group's execution, not shift forms.

why are feral druids switching to bear for festergut
'Cause they're doing it wrong.

where get jetpack gunship
For the Alliance...from the goblin next to Muradin. I assume there's one near Saurfang for the Horde peeps.

icc gunship battle how to use rocket pack
First you have to get it. Then you have to equip it (this step is important). Then you can use it.

when is cata coming out
When it's done.™

how to arrange groups in icc 25
1 through 5 usually works for my guild.

how to get to saurfang without going into icc
Nobody gets to Saurfang. He gets to you.

level 78 draenei hunter talent tree
I'm not even sure how this led to my blog.

do i get to keep my gold when cata comes out?
No. Your gear goes away, too. You have to start leveling at 80 completely naked.

family bondage games
I know why this led to my blog, but I'm kind of terrified that someone was searching for it...

mangle fairie fire spam bear tank
Don't forget Swipe. That's in there, too! And Maul!

what's better nurturing instinct or improved leader of the pack
Context is best. But unless you're PvPing as Feral, the answer is pretty much always ILotP.

in ICC can u skip to dreamwalker?
From where? The beginning? No. Once you've beaten Deathbringer? Yes.

restokin spec 3.3
You'll probably have more luck over at Restokin.