Joel's Scattered Thoughts

Notes on things that interest me

Posts Tagged warrior

Overcoming the Fear of Tanking

Dec 17

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Spinks had a good post on  Overcoming the Fear of Tanking.  This is a great time time to learn how to tank or heal if you haven’t already.  Here’s why:

  1. Tank and healers are in demand! You will have as much opportunity to run instances as your little heart desires.
  2. Effort to find groups is pretty much nil. Click the Dungeon finder icon, sign up, keep busy with the usual stuff till your dungeon pops, run the dungeon and get a free port back to continue on your way.
  3. Tanking or healing lower level instances is easy. If you lack confidence, join the queue for specific dungeons 10 levels lower than you are.  Even if you screw up big-time, you’re still likely to keep your group alive.  Run instances progressing in difficulty till you reach instances at your current level and you’ll be more than ready for those.
  4. If you fail, you can try again. Sometimes you’ll just be off – DPS is AOE pulling every mob in an instance, the healer or tank is sleeping,  or you just can’t remember which button does what.  No big deal.  No-one in the group is likely to remember you tomorrow and finding another group is a cakewalk.  Analyze your mistakes, shake it off, do a few quests, and try again with a new group.

My current goal is to run my death knight through all regular Northrend instances, then move through the heroics.  By the time I finish that I’ll be more than ready to tank anything on him.  Depending on my level of enthusiasm, I’m thinking of doing the same thing healing on my shaman and tanking/healing on my druid.  My warrior and paladin have already done their tanking through instances and I’m not very interested in straight up DPS in a group.

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Binding Heroic Strike to Mousewheel

Dec 1

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

If you are playing a warrior tank, follow this tip: Preventing “The Claw” – Binding Heroic Strike to Mousewheel « Tanking for Dummies.  I did this near the end of tanking Karazhan and found that it helped a lot.   I wonder if they’ll change Heroic Strike at some point?  I don’t know if I’ll be using it in the future as I doubt I’ll be tanking much before Cataclysm.  We’ll see if Cataclysm makes me want to raid again.

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Prot Warrior: Endgame Gearing

Nov 10

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Achtung Panzercow’s So You Want to Be a Prot Warrior: Endgame Gearing, Part II gives a nice breakdown of endgame gearing for a prot warrior as of 3.2.  I need to rebuild my trash set on Tristam  – it would probably be better than my current set for doing heroics.

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Yakra’s Theories on Tanking

Aug 9

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

If you’re looking for a good guide to warrior tanking and you dopn’t want to dig through the mass of Elitist Jerks posts, it’s hard to beat Yakra’s Theories on Tanking.  Yakra does a fine job of breaking down the numbers and concepts behind warrior tanking.   I would have liked to see a scale for ranking items, but I can understand that it would be a pain to keep up to date as well as a subject of endless debates over decimal points.

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Some thoughts on Leveling a Warrior Tank

Jun 8

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Tanking for Dummies points to Some thoughts on Leveling a Warrior Tank. There’s a lot of level-specific advice for leveling a warrior there. If I leveled a warrior again this would be one of my primary resources.

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Mount farming for fun and… well, fun

Mar 19

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

If you’re short a couple mounts for the achievement, Big Bear Butt Blogger has a suggestion in Mount farming for fun and… well, fun. Jaimie and I did this last week and it worked pretty well even with my fury warrior tanking. We managed to pick up 2 mounts and Jaimie’s holy paladin nuked me when we took a poke at the first boss.

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Healing on a Shaman

Feb 27

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 1 Comment

With my shaman at 80, I now need to figure out how to heal with a shaman.  The only thing I’ve healed with him is Karazhan at 70 and things have changed since then.

I’ve managed to get a lot of good gear thanks to LootRank, some luck at the Auction House, and my friendly neighborhood leatherworker. (Thanks Hidi!)  My plan is to respec and get into some instance runs this weekend.  I may try to finish off the initial Sons of Hodir questline first though.

Anna has a lovely guide to resto shaman healing spells.  PlusHeal talks a little more about spell rotations for different situations and provides some advice for new healers.  Lodur on World of Matticus has a post on Being the Shaman Behind the Meat Shield. 

It’s been a while since I ran as a healer.  For now the plan is to keep tanking on my warrior as my main role, but it’s good to have options. 

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The Trash Caps – Warriors

Feb 24

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Assuming I remember to make a trash tanking set, knowing The Trash Caps for Warriors will be invaluable. Actually, making a trash tanking set would probably be a good exercise for me.

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My WoW Resume (early 2009)

Feb 23

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

resume I was reading Matticus’ post, What GMs Want to See on Your Guild App, and I stared thinking about some of my accomplishments in WoW.  Since many of these were pre-3.0, I don’t have the achievements for them which makes me a little sad.

Healing

  • Raid healed all of Zul’Gurub and Molten Core, and most of AQ-20 at 60 and roughly the first third of Kara at 70
  • Leveled a holy priest from 1-60 in vanilla WoW, then to 70 in BC
  • References: Anath, Legionofone, Balm

Tanking

  • Tanked Naxxramas-10 (Arachnid Quarter, Plague Quarter, Patchwerk, Grobbulus, Thaddius) and Sartharion 0 drakes.
  • Leveled a protection warrior and protection paladin from 1-70 in BC, then to 80 in Wrath
  • Tanked Karazhan and the first 3 bosses in Zul’Aman in BC
  • Tanked BC Heroics with bear druid
  • References: Mazzarella, Beeferino

DPS

  • Progression raided Naxxramas with Retribution Paladin
  • Raided BC farm content on BM Hunter, Enhancement Shaman,  Warlock
  • References: Shamaniac, Jusy

Raid Leading

  • Helped organize a guild alliance
  • Raid led through Karazhan, part of ZA, and Naxxramas-10
  • References: Zurdante, Mornal

PvP

  • Obtained Knight title in classic WoW
  • Hit Exalted with Stormpike Guard back in the days of 12 hour AVs
  • I don’t PvP anymore

That’s all that comes to mind right now.  It’s fun to look back on the stuff I managed to get done.  I would say that raid leading is probably the most challenging part of the game – not the fights themselves but all the dealing with people and their issues, balancing things so that it all works out. 

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TellMeWhen

Jan 24

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Tank Like A Girl discusses TellMeWhen for keeping track of self-buffs. This might be handy for making sure that I don’t forget to keep commanding/battle shout up at all times on my warrior. NeedtoKnow looks good too, but I’m not sure that it would be much of an improvement over DotTimer.

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Ret Paladin

Jan 10

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

ret_paladin I’m thinking of taking my paladin ret.  I don’t like tanking with her as much as I do on my warrior and right now our guild alliance has a surfeit of tanks.  I don’t think I’d raid or even instance with her, so it might be fun to try something new. 

If I do decide to pursue this, here are a few resources I’ll be consulting.

I have a pile of toons still to level and our raids don’t need more melee DPS at the moment, so those factors are somewhat of a disincentive. 

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Pawn Scales for Wrath

Dec 28

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 2 Comments

pawn Here are the Pawn scales I’m using for my toons in Wrath of the Lich King.   As always, Pawn is for quick comparisons, not for squeezing every last point out of your gear.  Read Skeleton Jack’s post on Pawn for some of the things to watch out for.  I have tweaked some of these scales and I have no strong theorycrafting proof behind their effectiveness. 

A few more points to note:

1. Each rating is relative only to itself.

Some pawn users assume that if they have two strings, that the rating that has the higher value is what the gear is better for. This is NOT the case. You should only use a rating to compare two items together, rather than using ratings to determine what an item is better for. (Note: This rule can be counterfeit, but that requires balancing points)
2. A rating that gives you numbers in the 100’s is no better or worse than one that gives you points in the 10,000’s
Remember, this is a relative comparison tool. So 900 – 1000 may be better than 90,000 to 95,000.
3. Pawn doesn’t account for everything
Raid buffs, gear changing, and Talents factor in here as well. These are static values to help determine relative value, but raid buffs, talent changes, and changes from blizzard will affect the relative value of these statistics, so these strings will more than likely be dynamic.

Warrior

Protection

Balanced

(Pawn: v1: “Balanced”: CritRating=0.89, Agility=8.47, ExpertiseRating=9.22, DefenseRating=11.13, BlockValue=4.86, ArmorPenetration=1, Dps=3.56, Strength=3.84, ParryRating=8.24, BlockRating=8.42, DodgeRating=9.61, HitRating=1.98, Stamina=14.29, Armor=1, HasteRating=0.62, Ap=0.43 )

Survival

( Pawn: v1: “Survival”: BlockRating=8.49, Strength=2.91, ParryRating=8.56, Agility=8.02, ExpertiseRating=7.22, DefenseRating=11.61, Stamina=14.25, Armor=1, DodgeRating=10.09, BlockValue=4.98 )

Threat

( Pawn: v1: “Threat”: ArmorPenetration=4.54, CritRating=4.03, Dps=16.15, Strength=4.66, ParryRating=0.41, Agility=3.26, HitRating=9.56, HasteRating=3.02, ExpertiseRating=9.56, Ap=2 )

Based roughly on Elitist Jerks Tanking Spreadsheet.  Needs to be edited for sockets.

( Pawn: v1: “Heavy”: RedSocket=16, CritRating=0.8, Strength=1, MetaSocket=8, ExpertiseRating=0.7, BlueSocket=16, YellowSocket=16, ColorlessSocket=16, HitRating=0.7, BlockValue=0.9 )

Based roughly on Matthew Rossi’s post,The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Heavy.  This is for leveling as a Prot Warrior.  Vene has a good post for Raid DPS as a Prot Warrior.

Fury

See this post for Fury Warriors.

Paladin

Mostly from this thread on Elitist Jerks. 

Protection

Mitigation

( Pawn: v1: “ProtMit”: DodgeRating=18, BlockRating=1, Ap=1.2, CritRating=0.6, Strength=9.5, ParryRating=14.5, ExpertiseRating=1.5, Agility=14.5, HitRating=1.1, Stamina=19.1, Armor=1.2, SpellPower=0.8, DefenseRating=16.5, BlockValue=16.5 )

Threat

( Pawn: v1: “ProtThr”: Intellect=0.2, DodgeRating=15.1, BlockRating=0.9, Ap=4.7, CritRating=2.4, Strength=18.8, ParryRating=12.8, ExpertiseRating=6.1, Agility=12.2, HitRating=4.2, Stamina=16.8, Armor=1.1, SpellPower=3.1, DefenseRating=13.9, BlockValue=17.4 )

Holy

( Pawn: v1: “Holy”: Intellect=2.25, RedSocket=24, CritRating=1.1, MetaSocket=75, HasteRating=1, BlueSocket=14, Stamina=0.1, SpellPower=1.2, Mp5=2.5, YellowSocket=30 )

Shaman

Enhancement

Based on a run of EnhSim, DPS simulator

( Pawn: v1: “AEP Calc”: Intellect=1.14, CritRating=0.64, Agility=1.39, ExpertiseRating=0.67, OffHandDps=4.33, YellowSocket=32, ArmorPenetration=0.52, RedSocket=32, Strength=1, MetaSocket=16, HitRating=0.68, BlueSocket=32, MainHandDps=8.82, HasteRating=0.81, ColorlessSocket=32, Ap=1 )

Restoration

Based on this post.

( Pawn: v1: “Resto (EJ)”: Intellect=7, RedSocket=105, HasteRating=3, BlueSocket=86, YellowSocket=112, SpellPower=5, Mp5=10, CritRating=3 )

EDIT: There is something broken about these scales for weapons. Do not use them to decide which weapon to use.

Hunter

Beastmaster

( Pawn: v1: “Beast Mastery”: Intellect=7, RedSocket=128, CritRating=5, MetaSocket=168, HitRating=10, Agility=7, HasteRating=2, BlueSocket=128, YellowSocket=128, ArmorPenetration=6, Mp5=8, Ap=4 )

From this thread

Druid

Cat

( Pawn: v1: “Cat (Toskk)”: ArmorPenetration=1.0161, RedSocket=37.312, Strength=2.332, CritRating=0.83, ColorlessSocket=37.312, MetaSocket=103.21, FeralAp=1, Agility=1.6992, ExpertiseRating=1.0362, BlueSocket=18.66, YellowSocket=26.92, HitRating=1.0334, HasteRating=0.7236, Ap=1 )

From Flyv

Bear

( Pawn: v1: “Bear (Toskk)”: RedSocket=113.7, YellowSocket=101.3, ColorlessSocket=172.4, MetaSocket=329, Stamina=7.185, Agility=3.429, Health=0.411, BlueSocket=172.4, Armor=1.066, DefenseRating=1.885, DodgeRating=2.685, ExpertiseRating=1.306 )

From Flyv

Resto

( Pawn: v1: “Resto”: Intellect=5.79, HasteRating=2.87, CritRating=2.05, SpellPower=9.4, Spirit=5.13, Mp5=10 )

From this Elitist Jerks Post

Death Knight

Unholy

( Pawn: v1: “Unholy”: ArmorPenetration=0.544, RedSocket=39.7552, CritRating=1.12, Strength=2.4847, ColorlessSocket=39.7552, HasteRating=0.621, Agility=0.7336, HitRating=2.474, BlueSocket=17.3929, YellowSocket=25.2329, TwoHandDps=7.567, ExpertiseRating=1.391, Ap=1 )

From Skeleton Jack’s Post.  

Other

Other specs, Warlocks, Priests, Mages, and Rogues are out of luck here.  I suggest Elitist Jerks as a starting point. Good luck in your search!

 

NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All software is supplied as is, without guarantee.  The user assumes all responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features, including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion, hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components, windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.

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Who Are My Characters?

Dec 27

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I was talking with Jaimie yesterday about our Warcraft characters in a roleplaying sense.  I don’t have much of a backstory for any of them, but I do have a decent idea of their personalities.  It’s conversations such as these that have me considering an RP server if I reroll again.

Despite being a warrior that uses rage, Tristam is very calm.  Solid and reliable are words that come to mind when I’m thinking about him.  He doesn’t get angry and is very relaxed. He sees himself as the shield for the group.  “Is a shield false and only a sword true?”

Merddyn is a warlock because it’s convenient and easy.  He’s very self-centered and barely recognizes the existence of an outside world.  He’s not looking to rule the world (far too much bother), he just wants what he wants and sees no reason why he shouldn’t just take it.  “I’ve divided the world into two types of thing:  The ones I can kill with impunity, and those I have to be more circumspect about.“

Anzu is a very angry shaman.  I have no idea what he’s angry about. He quests so that he has a socially acceptable way to kill things.   Merddyn will kill you if you get in his way, but otherwise doesn’t care about you.  Anzu wants to kill you but won’t unless it’s acceptable to the Horde.  “In the beginning, the Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.“

Early on, Andromache would have preferred to be an alliance paladin working with the Naaru rather than stealing the Light’s power.  She wants to do what’s right.  After having gone through Outlands, she has retained her strong moral and ethical sense, but no longer trusts the Naaru. “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through every heart – and through all hearts.“

Arthemis wants to take things apart to see how they work.  She’s chosen to be a hunter because people in cities tend to get upset when you take apart magical or mechanical things and you can’t quite put them back together.  She’s happiest out on her own thinking.  “Most things run on smoke. If it leaks out, they don’t work.”

As a druid, Emerys feels a deep connection with nature.  He fits the stereotype of the hippie druid.  He’s calm and quests because he wants to help maintain nature’s balance.  “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences.“

I don’t know why but I like having some idea of who the characters I play are. 

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Prot DPS Guide

Dec 24

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 1 Comment

Warrior Vene’s Quick and Dirty Pre-Naxx Prot DPS Guide gives some tips for when you have to DPS as a Prot warrior. This would also be useful for the daily quest grinds.
EDIT: Do NOT use this for questing. It hugely over values Hit and Expertise against mobs your level or lower. This is only for raiding. Follow Matthew Rossi’s ideas instead for questing or leveling.

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Leveling Blacksmithing

Dec 2

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

blacksmith At the request of one of the members of our guild alliance, I focused in on leveling blacksmithing last night.  Jaimie had spent way too much time mining saronite, eternals, and the odd bit of titanium so thanks to her I had the raw materials to proceed. 

I didn’t bother following any leveling guides.  If I could make an item from the Tempered Saronite set I made two so that both my paladin and my warrior would be geared for tanking.  The exceptions were the two Daunting pieces, which are better than the Tempered Saronite equivalents for tanking.  I wound up disenchanting about 8 items and now I have tons of Titanium Skeleton Keys but I’m almost at the point of being able to craft any blacksmithing item in the game.  I should hit that point tonight. 

Blacksmithing is expensive to level and so far the good stuff seems to be all BOE.  I suspect that if I had taken mining instead and used the money from that to buy the pieces I need, I’d have been way, way ahead.  Nevertheless, leveling professions is something I enjoy so that’s what I choose to spend my in game gold on.  Next big money sink is engineering! 

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Tanking Spreadsheet

Dec 1

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Taliafears at Elitist Jerks has a Tanking Spreadsheet up for warriors. I’m probably going to harvest this for values to make a Pawn scale for tanking gear. Then again, using a spreadsheet like this might help me spot when when my gear is not optimally enchanted or gemmed. I’m going to have to think about how much work I want to put into this.

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Warrior Defense Gear in Wrath

Dec 1

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

I actually did some leveling on my warrior this weekend as I need to catch up to the most advanced member of our static group.  We thought about running our current four instances (Utgarde Keep,  The Nexus, Azjol-Nerub and Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom) over and over to level, but we decided that would be dull and a waste of the shiny new content.  Instead we’re going to try to stay close to the same level and do a fair amount of solo/duo questing. 

I tried out Matthew Rossi’s ideas for Leveling a Protection Warrior to 80.  With Jaimie’s holy paladin beside me, it feels even faster than our paladin/mage duo.  I did a bit of solo questing and even without a healer this approach is amazingly fast! 

Anyhow, since it looks as though I’ll be hitting 80 sooner rather than later, I need to make sure I’m working on upping my defense gear.  Current target is 540 defense skill (i.e. 689 defense rating).  Ciderhelm has an Easy 540 Defense Gear Guide up.  I should have no problem getting enough of these items.  My blacksmithing is proceeding apace, so I should be able to make a pile of pretty crafted gear.  In a lot of cases, it looks as though crafted gear is giving drop gear a run for its money.  As someone who spends way too much money on crafting, this makes me happy.defense

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Leveling a Protection Warrior to 80

Nov 24

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | 2 Comments

Matthew Rossi has a post,The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Heavy, that describes a protection leveling build. He claims that Protection is currently the best leveling tree for warriors. Stats priority for this build is: strength/SBV, crit, hit/expertise – I’m going to have to play around to figure out the weightings. I should have no problem tanking – if anything I’ve been a little light on rage when doing instances. I am definitely going to have to give this build a shot.

EDIT: Rotation is Shield block –> shield slam –> shield bash –> revenge/HS –> shield slam.

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WotLK WotLK Fury Gear Scale

Nov 22

Posted by Joel in General | 4 Comments

I’ve slapped together the following, based roughly on WotLK WotLK Fury Gear Guide – TankSpot.

  • 1 STR = 1 SEP
  • 1 AP = .45 SEP
  • 1 Crit Rating = .9 SEP
  • 1 AGI = .75 SEP
  • 1 Haste Rating = .55 SEP
  • 1 ArP Rating = .7 SEP
  • 1 Hit Rating = .2 SEP (Since I’m not hit capped, I put it up to .3)
  • 1 Expertise Rating = 1.1 SEP
  • 1 Armor = .0075 SEP

Some stuff wasn’t covered so here are the values I’m using

  • Sockets (any color except meta) = 16 SEP assuming 16 STR gems in all sockets
  • Sockets (meta) = 8 SEP a rough guess not really based on anything
  • DPS = 5 based roughly on this
  • Block value = .5 A very rough guess

Don’t forget to add in any racials for weapons

Here’s my Pawn Scale for DPS for a prot warrior.
( Pawn: v1: “DPS”: ArmorPenetration=0.7, RedSocket=16, ColorlessSocket=16, BlockValue=0.5, CritRating=0.9, Dps=7, Strength=1, MetaSocket=8, YellowSocket=16, Agility=0.9, HitRating=0.3, BlueSocket=16, Armor=0.0075, HasteRating=0.55, ExpertiseRating=1.1, Ap=0.45 )

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Warrior (0/8/54)

Nov 16

Posted by Joel in World Of Warcraft | No Comments

Next time I’m in a capital I think I’m going to switch to this Warrior (0/8/54) for leveling. I’m tanking a lot but it looks as though I’ll be doing some questing, which means more DPS would be great.

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