80...part III

And friday, it happened again. Mardah was rescuing some crusaders from the Scourge in Icecrown when she got her final experience to reach 80. So I learned some new spells, and put myself in the LFG for some easy Heroics, Violet Hold, Halls of Stone.

I got invited to a party to VH. Well, that was some harder healing then I was used to :p. We got defenseless and the party continued towards Drak'Tharon Keep. That was a little easier to heal, and we got the Oh Novos!-achievement. Then they wanted to go to Halls of Lightning... ouch.

Well, I did my best, and everyone knew how long I was 80 (having a achievement-pop-up saying you got your first amblem :p). But nonetheless, they thought I did some 'sick' healing and where ready to go with me. Now HoL is, together with the Occulus, one of the hardest Heroics in my memory. But it seemed to go well, we even got Shatter Resistant. But then came Loken.

I did everything right..no problem on the healing.. except, well, my Health was barely 13k, so I was death after the first Loken-Nova. Second try we all run different ways.. no good. Third try, I survived the first Boom, but the second was to much. But with full HoT's ticking on the party, they downed him.. within 2 minutes. Another achievement :p

Sunday-morning I spend some gold to level Leatherworking a little bit more, so I could make the 2 purple recipes, and I got a nice ring from somewhere, more suited for boomkins, but better then I had for resto. So the race is on for more Epics :p

And, of course, the moment I hit 77, I was in Storm Peaks, so again hunting for Sons of Hodir... which is easier now that you can use those relics of ulduar to gain rep. Oh, and I got the dragon from the Culling of Stratholme.. lol, I am a druid, why do I need that :p

I also encountered some bad tanks.. but my pocket-tank :p is 77 now... almost there.

Defense Cap

I always said, there is no defense-cap... well actually there is.

When your total dodge+parry+miss=102.4% you have reached the usefull defense-cap.

This thread on Maintankadin (here) delves into this further completely useless information.

Unbuffed Defense-cap is 7491 defense-rating = 1532 defense skill
Raid-buffed cap is 7083 defense-rating = 1440 defense skill

So next time someone asks me if I am defense-capped, I just say that I am...what??? 900 short??

Almost there

Well, Mardah reached 75 today. And the last few days I found out that if you have some more blues :p, healing is not that hard as the first few times. And it also helps if your tank is almost uncrittable, and the rest of the DPS is not hitting something else.

Mots of the time it's just Rejuv-spam and Wild Growth if the whole party gets damage. Mardah got the achievement for the quests in Tundra, did some quests in Dragonblight, some in Grizzly Hills, and is now back with the Kalu'Ak to get some mor reputation. Rewards from those are available at 76. After that it is probably Wyrmrest-Time :p

I am still looking for a non-elitist-jerk blog to read about trees and chickens. It seems Phaelia has not been replaced yet, or I am missing something, most of the blogs I know are written by and for Paladins :p

Talking about pallies... the new Vindication will be Mandatory in 3.2 imho. But more on that in a later blog.

Worgen and Goblins?

Datamined from the PTR, new Worgen and Goblin Masks, and speculation starts if the are the new races in patch 4.0.

Goblins are, like World of Matticus said, Ferengi. They work for both sides to make the most money. It would be interesting to see which classes they would get. Warriors, for sure I guess, mages, rogues, priests, warlocks and hunters are also conceivable. But do you see a Goblin Paladin or Shaman, or a Goblin Druid, probably not.

Worgen from Gilneas (look that up on wowwiki), not alligned with the Alliance, or the Horde for that matter. Classes would be warrior again I guess, and they are close to nature so maybe shamans? No paladins for sure, and hunters... meh, wolfs taming wolfs, seems unlikely. Mages and rogues could be an option, but warlocks... maybe.. oh... and Druids of course.

They are called Worgen, not werewolves, and even then, a lot of literature already is mentioning just weres, humans able to shapeshift in different forms... so, a worgen Druid would not be that farfetched, and again the nature theme ofcourse.

Also the fact that both races are not-alligned gives the speculation that they start as neutral, and that later on, at level 20 I guess, you could choose your faction, either Horde or Alliance... now that will be interesting.

But speculation is still speculation.... but alas, that's also a part of World of Warcraft

So,

Goblin Warriors, Rogues, Mages, Hunters, Priests
Worgen Warriors, Druids, Shamans, Warlocks, Mages/Rogues

...oh, and Death Knights of course... /sigh

Avoidance and Uncrittable

Second post today (dam european servers)

I just read through a lot of theorycrafting on tankspot and maintankadin, and below is the TL;DR-version. It al concerns the fact that parry and dodge will have other avoidance-percentages in 3.2.

From Xenix-Tankspot
1) Stack defense rating until you reach a number that has a minimum of wasted in the defense rating -> defense conversion. (728,787,846,910 and 969 are the best possible ones to hit).
2) Stack dodge/parry rating from there so that the post-DR portions of your Dodge% and Parry% are in a 1.875:1 ratio
3) If your total dodge+parry rating is getting anywhere near your defense rating, try to hit the next good number of defense rating (while adjusting your dodge/parry rating to maintain #2) as the diminishing returns on miss will be such that you will notice a slight difference.
4) If you can't hit the next good number of defense rating, don't worry - keep stacking dodge/parry in the aforementioned ratio and you'll be fine.

But, as Theck on Maintankadin concludes, it may sometimes be hard to reach that optimum;
Xenix's method is clearly the best way to optimize your avoidance. It may be difficult to do in practice though, especially when juggling multiple gear sets.
Two close, simple approximations are:
At low gear levels ( defense rating + dodge rating + parry rating < 1150 or so), just ignore defense and stack dodge and parry rating in a 1.88:1 ratio.
At higher gear levels (defense + dodge + parry > 1150 rating), gear so that your post-DR dodge and parry percentages come out as close to a 1.88:1 ratio as possible. In other words:
CODE: SELECT ALL
(character_sheet_dodge_% - 10) / (character_sheet_parry_% - 10) = 1.88

This is also equivalent to the algorithm I posted earlier for ratings:

Take current ratings and subtract out 689 def, 96 dodge, and 64 parry
Figure out your current ratio of dodge:def:parry
if one of these is higher than the ideal ratio of 2.4:1.8:1, swap out some of the rating that's above the target ratio for a rating that's below or at the target value.
Recalculate and lather, rinse, repeat.

Note that this method may result in some "wasted" defense rating, but will also ensure that you're within about 0.075% avoidance of the best possible value you can have without forcing you to worry about exactly how much defense rating you have

Trust me, you don't want to read the full posts, unless you love mathematics.

Let's look at Gowron

Defense-rating:817
Dodge-rating:393
Parry-rating:330

So according to Xenix, my def-rating is BAD, I either have to gain some (hard) or loose some (easy, change some enchants/gems). Now what happens with Theck's info:

Def: 817-689=128
Dodge:393-96=297
Parry:330-64=266
->converting to 2.4;1.8;1
0.48 ; 1,12 ; 1

So, my defense is way to low to be optimal, so I should actually be aiming for 846 defense to be optimal there.
Raising it more ofcourse is to hard. But that's not really bad, as long as I am around there. I do have to much parry, when looking at the dodge/parry-conversion of 1.8;1. So at the moment, I should favor Defense, then Dodge, then Parry... not much has changed :p

Oh, and for Madouc:
At level 70, you need to have 490 defense to be uncrittable vs. lvl73-mobs, and 485 defense vs. lvl72-mobs.
At level 80, you need to have 540 defense to be uncrittable vs. lvl83-mobs, and 535 defense vs. lvl82-mobs.
It is a linear line. So at level 72, you need to have 485 defense to be uncrittable vs. lvl72, and for every level the mob is higher add 5 defense. Or, in an other way, you need 140 defense above your base defense (your level times 5) to be uncrittable against mobs 3 levels higher then you.

Now only one question remains, all raid-bosses are skull-level. So, is Attumen now a lvl83-boss and can he crit lvl70-characters to dead, or is he considered 3 levels higher as you, making him lvl75 vs. a lvl72-character??

Northrend at 67

Ezrila did a long streak of instances yesterday with 3 other people, and 1 spot being changed. We did get a good impression of the new Huntard, called Death Knight. Really, some knowledge about your class would be nice, and needing on a spellpower-weapon and then also equipping it is really... well :p

So after Mana-Tombs-Crypts-Durnholde-Setthek Halls, and one quest in the Blade Edge mountains, Ezrila hit 67. I had some meat gathered, and levelled cooking to 450, and with my herbalism sitting at 373, I went to Northrend to learn the next levels. I actually completed my first Northrend quest, Northrend Cooking, which is available pre-68. Then it just hit me, I rode out of and started killing the undead crypt-thingies. 15 minutes later, and 10% Xp (unrested later) I had my second lightbulb lighting up.

Mardah is a Skinner, and needs a butt-load of Borean Leather, so Ezrila went to the other starting zone, and tried to skin the wolves that attacked the settlement... epic fail. They de-spawn to fast. So I rode out, and started the Shoveltusk Extermination Squad. These beasties travel in packs which are not hostile towards you, and there are single hostile arounds. So, here I was happily killing those for leather/scraps and meat.

It lasted around 30 minutes before a yellow dot appeared on my mini-map, yeah, my first northrend-herb... 2 Gold Clovers, 3 Deadnettles and a Frost Lotus from my first Herb LOL. So I did this for about 45 minutes, getting to 40% XP, when I was called out by Madouc to join a OHF-BM-run... because, and I quote one of the others in the party, "The Death Knight could not understand the intricate possibilities of the tour-quest" LOL.

Something went wrong, so we had to actually had to do OHF twice. Escorting Thrall is not actually an escort quest, so one of the party-members didn;t accept the second quest because he was afraid to start it, which normally happens. In OHF that is not the case, which is confusing. In BM Ezrila got a leather and a mail item, which can be equipped at lvl68, whoopee, that means I can get to use them for what? 5-6 quests? Before I get better...

So I am now actually levelling 2 characters, at around the same level...

Oh, and Mardah did some Northrend-Dungeon Healing, Utgarde Keep. While healing in the TBC-dungeons is boring, even in BM, healing in UK was hard, large damage-spikes (crittable tank??), AoE-damage, and DK's pulling aggro. Trust me, if you pull aggro from the tank in a Northrend-dungeon, with a healer who has gear on that level (not T6 or sunwell-gear), you have a good chance to die :p

The Master's Key

Mardah (now 72) and my friends 71 warrior are now attuned to Karazhan

We did Mechanar-Botanica-Arcatraz-Shadow Labs-Steam Vaults-Arcatraz-Black Morass-Karazhan today :p

Ok, we only killed on horse in Kara, being only the 2 of us, but we did get a soul essence :p

This makes it the third time I did this. Gowron and Lurge are also attuned, I think Lurge can even get the Hand of Adal title... if he kills vash and kael :p

How to level as protection paladin.

I did it. Climbing the mountain through the snow, both ways... and I had no help from Chuck N. When I started Gowron, I wanted to be protection, not that I had any idea what a tank was, but the lower-damage-receiving-talents looked nice, so I went protection. Now in those days (early TBC) prot damage was low, but these days it isn't that bad. But where to put your talents when you want to level as prot?

First of all, going for a raiding-spec is of course not the way. Most raiding-specs these days have 3 points in Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian , but these don't really help for levelling. Most raid-specs although don't have reckoning, it doesn't proc judgements and you need a 2.0-speed (or lower) weapon to take the most out of it, but, for levelling reckoning is a good choice, more swings=faster kill.

And you need to watch out with your mana. At level 30 you can get Blessing of Sanctuary (through talents), at level 40 you can get access to Spritual attunement, and Divine Plea will not be available until level 71. So although DP is golden for tankadins, you won't have acces to it until you are already 3 levels in Northrend. And with that in mind, here comes the talent guide :p

Ok, you reached level 10, probably your first achievement. You know have acces to Seal of the Righteousness, Devotion Aura, Blessing of Might (handy for solo-ing), Judgement of Light, Divine Protection and Lay on Hands. So You already got your 2 oh-shit-buttons, the seal you will be using up until lvl64, your judgement of choice, and the tanking-aura. Not to bad. Your first 5 talent-points should go into Divine Strength. More attack power and block value. Just forget about Divinity, wasted points imho.

At level14 and 16 you get your 2 'taunt'-spells. And at 16 you also get Retribution aura. Now that one is tricky, but what I remember is that it is golden to keep threat on multiple mobs. So you probably will be using that a lot, unless the damage-in gets to high...which is almost no longer the case pre-northrend. You also get Righteous Fury at 16, NEVER TAKE IT OFF AGAIN :p. Second 5 points should go into Anticipation, 5% dodge, your healers will love you (mmm, in my levelling days this was defense-increase).

Bang. You hit level 20 : Exorcism,Consecration and Blessing of Kings. Exorcism is a nice pulling-tool (even if it gets a casting-cost), consecration will stick all mobs to you like glue (so you can probably stop using retri-aura), and KINGS, more strength,armor,crit,intel,spirit and health, yeah, except for the spirit :p. Be happy, your next learnable spell which will be usefull for tanking is at level 64/66 (depends if your allie or horde). So a rundown of talents now.

lvl20-22, Improved Righteous Fury 3/3, less damage.
lvl23-24, Toughness 2/5, more armor, but percentage-based, so not that big an increase at low levels.
lvl25-27, Improved Devotion Aura 3/3, more armor, more healing for the whole party.
lvl28-29, Toughness 4/5.
lvl30, Blessing of Sanctuary

In the next patch, BoSanc will also increase your stamina by 10%, but till then you have to decide if you want to have more health or more mana-return, and less damage. I would choose BoSanc, if only because it's a real sign for : I AM THE TANK.

Now let's look at the things we skipped, Divine Sacrifice/Guardian I already mentioned, just like Divinity (talent of overhealing). Both Stoicism and Guardian's Favor are more oriented towards PvP, just like Improved Hammer of Justice. Although the latter does have more uses in PVE. But these PvP-talents are more suited to retridins doing PvP, then for tanks, who mostly do PVE.

lvl31-33, Reckoning 3/5, more swings, more damage, more threat (see above). 3 points is more then enough here.
lvl34, Toughness 5/5.
lvl35-37, One-handed Weapon Specialization, more damage, more threat, and read it good. It increases ALL damage.
lvl38-39, Sacred Duty, more stamina.
lvl40 Holy Shield

Another bench-mark. You will be using this, always. Never let it fall off while tanking. 30% more block, and it gives a little threat.

lvl41-42, Spiritual Attunement 2/2

Although most raiding specs only have one point here, at this level you don't have access to Divine plea, so max it out.

lvl43-44, Ardent Defender 2/3, this can be a good lifesaver, and will be even better in the next patch.
lvl45-47, Combat Expertise 3/3, more everything :p
lvl48-49, Redoubt 2/3, more Block Value, and a nice proc-based ability.
lvl50, Captain America's Shield

mmm, ok, Avenger's Shield. This will be your pulling tool from now on. it can hit up to 3, but beware of the daze-effect. Although you can play with that. Shield 3 mobs, and then unload the rest of your spells on number 4. No way they gonna pull the first 3 of you.

lvl51-53, Touched by the Light 3/3.

Pre-WotLK, Tankadins needed spellpower, not strenght. But in patch 3.0 all our abilities where changed, so that they also scale with attack power, yup, ALSO. So spellpower is still a nice threat-stat, but tbh, all the spellpower you'll need comes from this talent.

lvl54, Redoubt 3/3

Don't take Guarded by the Light. Although the reduced spell damage is nice, the biggest boon from this talent is useless until you reach level 71.

lvl55-59, Judgement of the Just 2/2, Shield of the Templar 3/3

It doesn't matter in which order you take those, they are both mandatory, reducing your incoming damage by a lot.

lvl60, Hammer of the Righteousness

Another tool to keep threat and do damage on multiple targets. Parties will love you for never loosing threat.

Now it's time to leave the prot-tree for some time, take 5/5 Deflection in the retribution tree, more avoidance is good.
At lvl64 (allie) or level 66 (horde) you'll get Seal of Vengeance/Corruption. From now on, this will be your seal of choice. It does way more damage then SoR.

lvl61-65, Deflection 5/5
lvl66-67, Improved Judgements 2/2, faster judgements, more damage, more threat.
lvl68-70, Heart of the Crusader, more crits for everyone :p

At lvl 71 you'll get Divine Plea. I am not 100% sure, but I think that by putting 1 point in Guarded by the Light should be enough to not get mana-problems. Bw at lvl70 you get Avenging Wrath, if you use your wings before pulling...well..more threat :p

lvl71, Guarded by the Light 1/2
lvl72-73, Pursuit of Justice, faster walking means faster questing, and getting to the bosses faster.
lvl73-75. Conviction 3/5, more crit is nice, not really needed, but you need to put the 3 points somewhere. Alternatively, if you find yourself solo-ing a lot, putting these 3 points into Benediction can also be usefull.

At lvl75 you get Shield of the Righteousness. You know have all tanking abilities you'll need. This is the time to study the 9-6-9 rotation. Basically, you have 6 spells, 3 of them are the 6-second-spells (Hammer of Rightousness,Shield of Rightousness and Avenger's Shield), the other 3 are the 9-second-spells (Judgement,Consecration,Holy Shield). You just alternate between a 6-spell, and a 9-spell. Never using two 6, or two 9-spells after each other.

lvl76-78, Crusade, more damage, more threat.
lvl79, doesn't really matter. you can max out Ardent Defender, or Guarded by the Light, or put one more point in conviction.

lvl80 Respec to end-game-build :p And you get Sacred Shield, which you should keep up, if you have no holy pally healing you (then it is their job)

Old blogs and other stuff

Well, I found two blogs again which I read a lot. They changed their names, but now they are back in my blog-roll. Ulushnar changed gender *gasp*, and Lore wrote a nice piece about healing some way back.

I can see what Lore is telling. I had the oppurtunity to heal a couple of bosses in Ulduar some weeks ago, and all I did was spam Holy Light. I think I only used Flash of Light 5 times. And I really needed to look out when to use a GCD to judge/Divine plea or recast Beacon/Sacred Shield.

I also know what my healing bar looked like in Karazhan. It had Max rank FoL, Max rank HL and HL rank 7 (iirc). And of course the old saying I used: Bind one key to FoL, and the rest to HL. Spam FoL, and in case of emergency, smash head into keyboard :p I did need to watch my mana those days, so spamming HL was out of the question. These days, with all the replenishments and mana-buffs, just spam HL, you'll never get out of mana.

So lowering boss' damage, towards not 2-shooting tanks, and lowering mana-returns seems like a good idea to me. It would give healers a choice again which spell to use.

And on Argent Dawn, Mardah has reached 72. She already got two blues from the early instances, but is now on hold, so my friend can catch up. Ezrila has reached 61 today, and was in a party without a Death Knight to ramparts... so she got the Hell Reaver :p. She is also sporting 2 mail-pieces now, which are better then the greenies you get from early OL-quests. Mailadin FTW :p

I also cleared all my mailboxes on Ghostlands. The move by my-now-former-co-officers didn't land well with me. I am actually looking forward to the faction-change. That way all the time I spend on Gowron isn't wasted, now.. will he become human or draenai :p ... probably human... and female then I guess, I just hate the looks of human males ;p

It's done

Now Playing:

Mardah
Night Elf
lvl69 Druid
Balance/Restoration dual-spec
Argent Dawn (EU-RP)
Skinning/Leatherworking
Guild: Dark Cloud

...and back from Roskilde

I have returned :p

10 days of burning heat, no wind, almost no shadow, and I have survived. Having to live 10 days on a festival-camping-sites really brings the best, and worst to the surface of people. Luckily mostly the best, or like Mike Patton from Faith No More said: Hello Hippies LOL

I also had some time to think about what to do with WoW. It is unlikeley I'll be returning to XII, they actually opened a spot for a tankadin... but I had a good talk with Kemwer, and I will be transferring my 68-Nelf-druid tonight. Kemwer is playing a Draenei Prot-warrior, and he is about to embark into Northrend. He hasn't been there before, and by transferring my druid, well... Tank/Healer LF 3 DPS... easy enough.

I also could have levelled my pally on that server (now 60), but then we where chasing the same loot, not handy. And yes, we will be running a lot of instances :p

Now, how did I spec a druid again...