One of the great things about the standard Blizzard UI is the portraits given to your toon. Back in TBC, what I liked to do was show my helm for one gear set, my cloak for another and neither for a third. It made it easy to tell what set of gear I was in and as a result, I never found myself accidentally running into an encounter unprepared.

These days though, I never show my helm.

Last post, I talked about ..read the full article

During our Blood Queen progress on Sunday, I noticed an interesting phenomenon between myself and my offtank. Whenever Blood Queen flew into the air, I’d position myself exactly where I was tanking Blood Queen and my offtank would run behind me about 10 yards and up the stairs. (You have to spread out during this portion of the encounter) It didn’t matter whether a slow reaction to fear left us in a less than ideal setup to accomplish this, we ..read the full article

For those of you that having been living under a virtual rock for the better part of this expansion, GearScore is a wildly popular add-on that does exactly what it says. It gives you a score based on your gear. The better you gear is, the higher your score is.

It’s also probably the most hated add-on on the market right now too.

Which kinda confuses me…

Rewind back to the beginning of this expansion before GearScore was widely use, how did you ..read the full article

Looking back on our Putricide10 man kill, I’m reminded of a number of mistakes that I made while we went through the learning process. This fight really is an excellent example of a fight where small subtle choices you make can have huge implications.

1. Erratic Boss Movement There’s no avoiding it… you’re going to have to move bosses sometimes. However, how you do it can make a big difference. If you can develop a rhythm from one attempt to the next ..read the full article

Changes in this patch for us:

Concussion Blow: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 50%, but its threat generation will remain approximately the same. Devastate: This ability now deals 120% of weapon damage, up from 100% of weapon damage. Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield ..read the full article

Unexpectedly, the Blizzard team has decided to let us in on the little secret of how things will be changing Tier-wise in the next minor patch.

Gloves Breakdown

(Old) Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards 1579 Armor +81 Strength +148 Stamina Yellow Socket Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina Equip: Increases defense rating by 71. Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 63. Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

(New) Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards 2461 Armor +81 Strength +148 Stamina Yellow Socket Socket Bonus: +6 Stamina Equip: Increases defense rating by 71. Equip: Improves hit rating by 54.

Change +882 Armor - 63 Dodge rating

Gauntlets of the Kraken 2658 ..read the full article

The gang at Blizzard HQ had this to say recently regarding the Tier 10 tanking sets:

We recognize that many plate tanks are making their gear choices based on the amount of armor they’re provided, as this is currently the most preferred stat. In order to make the tier-10 plate tanking sets more desirable, we will be adjusting the stats on the gloves and chest pieces in order to inflate the amount of armor they provide in the next minor patch. ..read the full article

I have a theory. Tanks are creatures of habit. We do our tank thing at our tank pace. So, the LFG Tool throwing us into a million different types of pugs on a regular basis has come to something of a rude awakening to those of us that like to smell the roses while tanking.

The Need for Speed

Whether or not you should have to pull fast is a topic for another day. What we’ll look at today is how to ..read the full article

Entering Icecrown, we’ve got a number of interesting weapons to choose from and if you’ve kept up with the content, I think you’ll be hard pressed to not have something usable. The larger question though isn’t what is usable, but instead what’s desirable. What didn’t drop for me that should have. Is anything worth still running pre-Icecrown instances for? You bet. Let’s begin.

Heroics

Red Sword of Courage Upon launch this was the must have weapon that you ran Utgarde Pinnacle for over ..read the full article

When analyzing the encounters, both Festergut and Rotface clearly have a lot of magic damage to dole out, but does that really matter?

A bit. Not a lot.

What you give up for Bonus Armor

I’ve been raving about Bonus Armor and the often counter argument is it does nothing against magic damage.

Which is true.

However, what does Avoidance do against magic damage? What does Expertise and Hit rating do? How about Block?

Nothing.

Which is what you give up to get Bonus Armor.

You give up ..read the full article

Sentinel’s Winter Cloak [50] Verdigris Chain Belt [60] Gauntlets of the Kraken [60] Cataclysmic Chestguard [95] Ymirjar Lord’s Pauldrons [60] Ymirjar Lord’s Greathelm [95] Pillars of Might [184] Boots of Kingly Upheaval [115] Ymirjar Lord’s Breastplate [95] Ymirjar Lord’s Handguards [60] Corroded Skeleton Key [60]

Skip: Ymirjar Lord’s Legguards [95]

Yes, I snuck the crafted pieces that require Primordial Saronite (23 Emblems of Frost each) in there this time. I’m not taking into account that the patterns themselves require a Primordial Saronite to buy though which you may or may not have ..read the full article

Alrighty, just had the pleasure of completing the first part of the 10 man raid and I’m definitely impressed. If you want to walk into this blind, hopefully the title was enough of a tip off that this whole post is spoilers on how to do the fights. I’m not a lore guy so don’t worry, I won’t be mentioning anything like that… at least not intentionally. I won’t be talking about any of the trash. I feel like everyone ..read the full article

With the onset of Icecrown, there are a lot of things I could have talked about, but you’ll be able to find that kind of thing everywhere. So, instead I’m going to share something else with you. An interview.

Huh? How do you interview a trinket? Well, I hope that’s not what you’re thinking right now, but if you are, you’ll find this interview especially enlightening. I have the pleasure of presenting you my interview with Satrina of the Evil Empire ..read the full article

If you’re like me, you’ve forgotten to put up Vigilance more than your fair share of times. How do we deal with that?

1. We don’t

“Who cares. I don’t need the extra threat anyway.”

Even if the threat reduction isn’t required, there are still opportunities to gain extra taunts or at the very worst, provide extra damage reduction to one of our squishier teammates. Stop being lazy.

“Paladin threat is so stupid. I shouldn’t have to use my abilities.”

2. Get a Partner

“I remember ..read the full article

I’ve got a confession to make.

A lot of what I talk about I didn’t come up with. Which isn’t to say, that I’m copy-pasting someone else’s work, but it is to say that there’s a lot of places that I draw inspiration from. One in particular that I love is Steve Chandler’s book, “100 Ways to Motivate Others”. (Fair warning, that’s an affiliate link so should you buy the book, I will make a small amount of money. If this ..read the full article

If you’ve read this site for any length of time, you’ve realized that I don’t like to talk about “nothing” too often. However, I really like this topic.

Where we are

It’s pretty clear to everyone that we use 1-2 tanks in 10s and 1-3 tanks in 25s. 10s seem to do a pretty good job of giving 2 tanks something to do on every fight. 25s are the same way.

The problem with this debate

Everyone wastes their time pointing out ratios. Blizzard ..read the full article

With another podcast comes another influx of questions worthy of answering so here’s some of the more interesting ones with my responses. I’ve edited some a little bit just in case those asking the questions wanted to be anonymous.

Mail #1: Beasts

Hey Vene, i’m currently tanking Beasts in ToGC25 and was wondering if you have some advice.. The Raid Leader is drooling at the chance to get a pally tank to replace me and i don’t want that to happen.. ..read the full article

Topics:

The Best Trinkets Why do I have so little hit? Healers and You!