Ghostcrawler on Tank Active Mitigation

Here we have a post by Ghostcrawler on Tanking and active mitigation, with some ideas of how they might go about making us press more buttons.

They have noticed that now tanks don't need to spam buttons to generate threat, we can actually take it easy and concentrate more on keeping defensive buffs up. I can now concentrate on keep my Demo Roar up and Pulverize buffs up, and not bother using Thrash for threat, saving the rage and GCD for other things. I can take this time to look around at what is going on, instead of spamming buttons, and plan where I might kite to, or watch or adds, or other tanky things. This is good, and I like having the time to consider the environment and the current fight.

GC discusses the three models, which are "Tank DPS matters", "DPS buttons provide mitigation" and "DPS buttons build up resources", where they will make us again press lots of buttons. I quite like "DPS buttons build up resources", where you build up some resource and can choose to spend it when you need it. I think of Lacerate building up stacks now, but instead of Pulverize increasing the chance of a random shield, it actually generating the shield right there. That would be pretty cool, as there are definitely times in a fight I could do with more mitigation.

I can't help remembering the last time the water cooler was posted, some changes were made almost immediately. I think in this case the changes will be in 4.3, so we won't suddenly have a different way of going about tanking. Hopefully.

Hmm yes that is an interesting concept for the future... what? You changed it now!? Deathwing?

Threat changes
The latest dev watercooler was certainly interesting, with talks of threat changes and active use of mitigations. Among them were some likely changes:

Hotfix: The threat generated by classes in their tanking mode has been increased from three times damage done to five times damage done.

In an upcoming patch: Vengeance no longer ramps up slowly at the beginning of a fight. Instead, the first melee attack taken generates Vengeance equal to one third of the damage dealt by that attack. As Vengeance updates during the fight, it is always set to at least a third of the damage taken in the last two seconds. It still climbs from that point at the previous rate, still decays at the previous rate, and still cannot exceed the current maximum.

So that was interesting and maybe I missed the "hotfix" part here. But I certainly welcomed the increase in threat generation in the future.

Lo and behold, today we have a hot fix where said threat changes went live!

This should mean that tanks in 5 mans can probably AOE tank stuff easier, with less chance of mobs escaping their attentions. It should also mean raids will become even easier threat wise on a pull, currently the pull is the only part where threat of my tank matters, after a few minutes of a fight I usually have a big lead and can actually slack off on the threat quite a bit and prioritize keeping Demo Roar and Pulverize up over doing uber threat/DPS.

I am quite surprised by the speed of the hot fix however, clearly the water cooler series is actually talking about features the development team have already decided to deliver. They are using it as a vehicle to explain why they are changing certain things, rather than showing how they are thinking and what might just change in the future.

I can't wait to try the threat changes out tomorrow.

Patch 4.3 The Wings of Death
In other news, it turns out that patch 4.3 is the Deathwing raid, which is a little soon, but this leads to some intriguing questions.

When is the next expansion out? If 4.3 is coming out, say Holiday 2011, to coincide with a certain other MMO which is releasing then, will the next xpac be 4-5 months after? Like in 2nd quarter 2012? Another certain MMO is releasing in April 2012, which is certainly in 2nd quarter 2012. Putting the Wow xpac up against that would seem to be a cunning move. So here are my predictions, based upon nothing but the release dates of other MMOs which Blizzard are sure to want to compete against. Plus that we are not interested in waiting 6 months between content patches.

Will they announce the expansion and its date at Blizzcon? I was expecting the xpac to be announced (as some Panderan thing), but a date would be super-handy for sure. After all, it should have been in development since Cataclysm shipped, so they might have a good handle on when it will be ready.

Gamona.de are processing their video of the interview, so hopefully when that is put up we will have more information.

Tanking Shannox in Firelands

Given our guild is massively progressed with 1/7 in Firelands normal 10 man, why am I posting this information? Well, when tanking Shannox I have found the strategy guides somewhat less than helpful.

They describe the first phase of the encounter fine - tank him at 60 yards from the Riplimb tank, I find the RangeDisplay mod really useful for this, simply focus the tank and you can see how far you are from him, then set raid markers on your spots. Avoid fire traps at your feet, which DBM now calls out quickly. If Riplimb is coming back with a spear and there isn't enough time for your stacks of Tear to drop, kite Shannox away a bit, but stay in range of the healers. Again RangeDisplay helps here, set your healer as focus, then make sure it always reads 30 yards.

When Shannox gets enraged, don't worry, the extra healer for Rageface should now help to keep you up. Save SI for phase 2. It is when Riplimb dies and phase 2 is entered I struggled with.

Luckily last night we nailed it. In phase 2, Shannox stops throwing his spear and will just try to kill you by stabbing it into the group which does a Magma Rupture. This hurts but also repeats if you are still in range after he has done the attack. This leads to two 50k+ hits and given you have stacks of Jagged Tear, you are likely to die. I certainly did.

The trick here is, when Shannox casts Magma Rupture, strafe away from him as far as you can before he comes after you. You have a massive threat lead from phase 1 where you are just tanking him, I had 10k threat on him with the closest DPS was 4k. Backing up is too slow and you'll be in range of the second tick of Magma Rupture, no strafing at full run speed is definitely the way to go. Plus popping cool downs and the Mirror of Broken Images is very recommended here.

Once I stopped noobing it up and dying, the kill was easy and I even got some gloves too. Plus I almost beat a mage on the DPS meters with 9k of sweet Bear damage.

How about the Riplimb tanking job? No idea, we get the DK to do that one ;-)

Image from blizzplanet.com

Firelands raid and reputation and dailies gear

Taking inspiration from Restokin, Eao's Excursions, Wowhead and others, I'm looking at Bear gear here from the new Tier. This is from raid bosses, BoE drops from farming trash and thus the auction house, Avengers reputation from farming trash yourself, valor points from farming heroics, and Hyjal dailies rewards. Plus some crafted stuff.

I was interested on how to spend my valor points, which depends in which bits of gear are available and what raid drops I might be getting anytime soon.

Dailies
Firelands and Hyjal dailies unlock various item level 365 stuff, which is a mere 6 point upgrade over Tier 11 i359 stuff, but an upgrade nevertheless. My plan is to take everything, then replace it all with 378 gear as and when I get it. Other than whether to grind the hell out of the dailies, getting all of this stuff is a no-brainer. Plus there is also a load of tasty Moonkin and Cat gear.

Getting to the Molten Front
Matoclaw's Band

Vendor (Additional Armaments):
Ricket's Magnetic Fireball

Vendor (Filling the Moonwell):
Band of Glittering Lights
Moonwell Phial
Relic of Elune's Shadow

Vendor (Calling the Ancients):
Aviana's Grips

So I'll be unlocking the Moonwell vendor first, purely because they sell the most items.

BoE trash drops
Bored? Join a trash run for reputation and a crack at some BoE drops. Rich? Head on over to the Auction House or trade channel for the chance at some expensive BoE epics.

Scales of Life
Riplimb's Lost Collar
Ranseur of Hatred

I am 2 out of 3 for the BoE drops, thanks to lucky dice and a generous guild. Now if Riplimb's Lost Collar could get unlost, that would be handy. It is definitely worth doing some trash farming, for BoEs and the reputation items.

Avengers reputation
While running that Firelands raid trash, you can haz Honoured reputation with The Avengers of Hyjal. But no more, unless you can kill bosses. No sign of Emma Peel either, which is a shame.

Friendly: Sleek Flamewrath Cloak
Honoured: Flamebinding Girdle
Revered: Stay of Execution
Exalted: Viridian Signet of the Avengers

Riplimb's Lost Collar can stay lost once I get to honoured if I don't have it, although it has better secondary stats than the Flamebinding Girdle.

Valor points
Not killing bosses? Don't let that get you down, just grind 7 heroics into the dust for Valor points! Then die lots in the new, long and quite tricky Zul'* heroics!

Chest (2200 VP): Obsidian Arborweave Raiment
Gloves (1650 VP): Obsidian Arborweave Grips
Legs (2200 VP): Obsidian Arborweave Legguards
Neck (1250 VP): Necklace of Smoke Signals
Wrist (1250 VP): Flamebinder Bracers
Ring (1250 VP): Splintered Brimstone Seal
Relic (700 VP): Covenant of the Flame

Neither the Tier 12 head nor the shoulders can be bought with Valor Points, you need a token from Ragnaros and Staghelm respectively. The Legs and Gloves could drop from the new boss in Baradin Hold, Occu'thar. The bracers are BoE, so they could be gotten from the AH eventually (at great cost). The two piece set bonus is pure threat (and damage) increase, the 4 piece bonus is the one which might help survivability.

Crafted
Patterns for the crafted items drop from trash in Firelands.

Gloves: Clutches of Evil
Feet: Treads of the Craft

The Witch-Hunter's Harvester is also crafted from a pattern from the Firelands Dailies, but it is item level 365 and given the likely cost, might not be worth picking up. As ever your purse will be the deciding factor.

Boss drops
The least likely thing to get, at the moment for our guild, is the boss drops. Mostly because a boss has to drop dead before we get a chance at their shinies, and progress has been lackluster of late.

Head: Hood of Rampant Disdain (Lord Rhyolith (one of first 4 bosses))
Shoulder: Shoulderpads of the Forgotten Gate (Baelroc (5th boss))
Chest: Breastplate of the Incendiary Soul (Baelroc)
Wrists: Flickering Wristbands (Alysrazor (one of first 4 bosses))
Hands: Gloves of Dissolving Smoke (Shannox (one of first 4 bosses))
Legs: Cinderweb Leggings (Beth'tilac (one of first 4 bosses))
Feet: Sandals of Leaping Coals (Staghelm (penultimate boss))
Ring: Widow's Kiss (Beth'tilac)
Trinket: Spidersilk Spindle (Beth'tilac)
Trinket: Matrix Restabilizer (Ragnaros)
Neck: Choker of the Vanquished Lord (Ragnaros)
Cloak: Dreadfire Drape (Lord Rhyolith)
Weapon: Fandral's Flamescythe (Fandral)

Now here the first 4 bosses might be dying at some point, for our guild the latter ones are going to be difficult. It is nice that Ragnaros drops a trinket, but I doubt I will be seeing it, so that makes it worth getting the trash drop trinket. However I would hope Shannox, Beth'tilac and Rhyolith are within our reach, giving a good chance at legs, gloves, ring, helm and a different trinket.

What is harder to get is the items from later bosses; the chest, shoulders, feet, fire kitty staff (damn), neck and wrists. This is a good pointer for what valor gear to grab first. Shoulders are not on the valor vendor, neither are feet. Feet can be bought as a crafted epic, so keep an eye out for those, same with wrists or you can grind them. The weapon needs to come from trash. There are no relic drops either.

Thus the chest, neck, relic and ring are prime purchases for Valor, plus maybe hands or legs to get the 2 piece Tier 12 bonus. That will really come down to which drop I didn't get, hands or legs. I think I will grind up the chest first, then see where I am with the legs or gloves. Recall the 2 piece set bonus is just threat, and I don't hold out massive hope of getting 4 pieces, so I may go for relic, neck and rings cos they are cheap, once I get the chest, and hold out for drops on the legs and gloves. If you are in a more progressed guild, you may want to snag things in a different order and be ready to grab the 4 piece set bonus.

Barely raid tanking Maloriak

After Magmaw and Ods in Blackwing Descent have been defeated, the deadly lift boss opens up and once you defeat it (hint don't jump while it is going down), 3 further bosses are available. We tackled Maloriak next, so here are my thoughts on Bear tanking the encounter.

The bungling henchman of Nefarian, Maloriak is a 2 phase fight with 3 repeating subphases in phase 1, when he uses various potions which have a differing effect.

2 tanks are needed, one for Mal and one on add tanking duty. I usually manage to persuade the raid that I should be on Mal thanks to the perception of poor bear AOE threat, although I'm sure I could take the adds. Maybe. Dependings if those sneaky warlocks try to pad the damage meters by cursing some of the adds.

During phase 1 Maloriak is tanked next to his cauldron - he will throw either a blue, red or green flask into it, and while he does this, you can move close to where he stands and tank him there. The adds tank usually takes the adds to close to the door, away from Maloriak.

During the whole phase 1 Maloriak casts two abilities, Arcane Storm must be interrupted so a DPS gets this job, but in 4.1 with unmissable interrupts, you might get the interrupt duty. Release aberrations is a 1.5 sec cast, if successful, he will release 3 adds. Now he has a total of 18 adds, but he will release any left at the beginning of phase 2, so the trick is to release 9, kill them, repeat so in phase 2 none are left to release and kill the raid. Sometimes a DPS will be on duty to interrupt this, but sometimes I get to do it, I coordinate with the adds tank on vent to know when he wants more adds and when he has 9. More than 9 and he can't take the damage. The adds get a protection from damage so aren't damaged during most of phase 1. Further more, there are 4 or 5 casts of this during one "sub phase", so you have to let some through and interrupt some. I find a good way is letting the first through, interrupting the second, letting the third and fourth through. That way if the second one is not interrupted (due to a miss), I can try to interrupt the third. The best approach is to get some hit capped DPS to do this, but in 10 man it's not always an option.

When Maloriak throws a potion into the cauldron he gets abilities based on the colour of the potion. He alternates blue and red and after a few blue or red pots, will use a green one. Ideally you want the last set of adds to be released just before the Green sub-phase.

Red
Red means Maloriak gets fire spells, mainly a cone AOE fire attack, the damage of which is split across everyone who takes it. So the raid will collapse in behind you and you need to keep Maloriak facing the wall on the right of the room (as you enter), but definitely away from the adds tank! You don't want the adds tank to get the fire damage on top of the pounding they are taking from the adds.

Someone will get a Consuming Flames debuff which causes increased fire damage, if it is you, you really can't run behind the boss like the rest of the raid will do, so you just have to stand there and take the fire damage. Popping Mirror of Broken Images when he does the fire AOE is ideal. What do you mean, you don't have it?

Blue
Blue potion means he does frost damage, will entomb someone and also put a Biting Chill debuff on you. This just does more damage so don't worry, the raid will spread out but you can stay still and still tank him by the cauldron.

Green
On green he will cast the Debilitating Slime spell where everyone takes double damage, but also makes the adds take damage. You will also take double damage. He will also knock you back - after he throws the green pot into the cauldron, I try to line myself up so I am in line with him and the adds tank, hoping to be knocked back into the adds.You can also just run to the adds tank when you see him using the green vial maybe with Stampeding Roar. But a flying bear is just a whole lot more fun.

After his knock back the raid will AOE the adds, hopefully 9 of them. The adds tank will hold them in place. The MT role is to drag Maloriak into the adds so he gets some of the AOE damage the DPS are doing, but I also have to keep his summon adds spell interrupted, otherwise you get more adds which will cause chaos. A ranged dps will help here maybe to assist with the interrupts, but they will likely be busy interrupting Arcane Storm. So keep the Release aberrations spell interrupted during this sub-phase.

Dragging Mal into the adds is tricky - you may be knocked away from him, but feral charge will close the gap. He stops moving to cast arcane storm and summon adds, so you need to wait for the interrupt before moving further away from him.

During this sub-phase you take increased damage, so popping Barkskin or Survivial Instincts will help the healers out.

Once the adds are dead, you can draw Maloriak back to his cauldron and he will next use a blue or red pot. Then you repeat releasing some adds, doing blue or red pots then green, until he hits 25% health and phase 2.

Phase 2
The first warning of phase 2 is he casts release all minions which is not interruptible. By this point all the aberrations are dead, but he does release two big ones called Prime Subjects which will fixate a player and become un-tauntable for 10 seconds. The adds tank now just tanks these two, taunting them back off a player once the fixate is over, the player should be trying to get out of the way, but slows are useful like infected wounds.

Meanwhile Maloriak does more damage with Acid Nova, pop cool-downs here, and the MT kites him around the room while the DPS burn him down. This phase is generally when Bloodlust happens, and is a good time to pop berserk.

As the MT, in phase 2 you have to face him away from the raid, and toward somewhere no one is. This is because he casts Magma Jets toward where he is facing, which leaves a line of fire on the ground and will hurt if you get hit. When Jets is announced, strafe away a bit and he will stay still and cast where he was facing, then he will run to you. At this point he will be facing away from the wall (having just run toward you), so face him back to the wall and wait for the next Magma Jets. Because the jets leave fire on the ground, the raid will run out of space at some point so this phase is a DPS race.

I tend to face him to the back wall of the cauldron, then move him behind the cauldron and then along the left hand wall (as you enter the room). The smaller the movement you make to avoid Magma Jets, the closer together the flames are laid, so the more room you get to kite.

During phase 2 he also puts blue circles of swirly stuff on the ground which knock back, get out of those quickly as they will ruin your strafing! For this reason it's worth keeping yourself a slight distance from the wall, so you can back up toward it if you get a circle. If you strafe to the side to avoid a circle, he will point his Magma Jets at an angle and the flames on the ground will chew up a load of room!

Drops
Maloriak drops Aberration's Leggings and Cloak of Biting Chill.

Barely raid tanking Omnotron Defense System

Omnotron Defense System during the chaos

I am starting to document my experiences doing some raid tanking, despite the normal mode 5 mans I've done not being completely written up yet. Hey, raids drop sexy epics, right?

First up is the Omnotron Defense System in Blackwing Descent. This fight is actually the joint-first fight in BWD, but because I have a DPS offspec I have not yet tanked Magmaw, so it's the first one I'll write about! For a post about Magmaw, see the Primal Precision blog. It is hereafter referred to as ODS, although it is not odious but actually a lot of fun.

The fight
Continuing your mission to clear out Nefarian's rubbish, ODS consists of 4 robot constructs who activate in turn, but yet have a shared health pool. Each construct has an energy bar and when activated, it is at full (100). By using abilities, the constructs energy bar depletes - at half (50), a shield is popped and a new construct is activated, and at empty the construct deactivates. The next construct to be activated is not random, but fixed, but the order is random when you first engage, so you really don't know who is going to be next, unless you've already wiped and seen the order once through. You have 2 constructs active at a time, apart from at the beginning where you have only one.

Pro tip: If you are on the second construct, DPS in Cat form at the beginning before it activates.

Each construct does various abilities which the DPS and healers need to worry about, and each one's abilities are unique. This means when you get construct X and Y up, the raid needs to worry about the abilities of construct X and Y and deal with them.

We run with two tanks, one per construct. Generally you position the two active constructs apart, but be careful not to back up too far into a corner so that the healers cannot reach you. I tend to keep them on the outside edge of the room, with me stood closer to the middle.

Regarding the construct switch, you will be tanking one bot and DBM will show a shield warning as its energy gets to 50 and it pops a shield. At this point you never want to attack the shield, because they all do nasty things. Just press esc or de-target the construct. Now it will continue to attack, and after 10 seconds its shield will go and you can continue building threat. I tend to pop a cooldown like barkskin and just stand there dodging until the shield goes. Now you can see a purple beam going to the next construct which will be activated, so make sure you can see it to target it. When your construct gets to 0 energy, it will cast a shutdown spell, the next one will activate at the same time and if it is the first time the new construct is up, it will run off after a healer. As soon as the new construct activates you need to FFF and taunt it, then get some threat on it, especially because the DPS will switch to a construct when it activates, so they will be damaging your construct. If it is the second or subsequent time activating, the construct will come for you because aggro is not wiped, so it's easy, you should have a big threat lead because you spent the time from energy 50 to 0 just tanking it on your own. I tend to get both constructs in the same place and stay there (unless I get a green cloud under me).

Basically you just end up getting one bot after the other, with two of them alternating, and you can usually stand in the same place. The other tank will be always tanking the other two bots.

When you get a specific construct to tank, what you need to do depends on which one it is:

Toxitron
The nature damage construct. He puts Chemical Bomb on the floor which increases damage done to anything in it by 100%, so if it gets put under you, get out of it ASAP. It looks like a green cloud of smoke.

Pro tip: Pulling your tanked construct into Chemical Bomb will increase damage done on it by 100%, so if possible, get those bots in the green cloud.

He summons bomb adds with the Poison Protocol spell. These adds fixate on a raid member and travel slowly toward them, and need to be killed before they reach their target, otherwise they will explode. We get 3 on 10 man. This is why you need to keep him away from the other construct (and the rest of the raid), because when he summons adds you need the adds to travel the maximum distance to their target. The raid will be around the other construct if Toxitron is below 50 energy, and won't be paying attention to adds, so sometimes you need to shout out when he is summoning them.

Furthermore, if you are tanking another construct and Toxitron is up, you might get fixated on and an add will come for you, so you need to pay attention to DBM warnings when Toxitron is active. Luckily the bomb targets are not stunned, so you can kite the construct away from the bomb until the DPS kill it.

Arcanotron
The arcane construct. He puts a puddle of Power Generator under himself, this increases damage done by anything standing in it by 100%. You need to move him out of this puddle, and make the DPS and healers aware it is there, so they can stand in it.

Pro tip: Move him just out of the puddle, so the melee can stand in it and enjoy the damage increase.

Interrupt duty is required on Arcanotron, he casts Arcane Annihilator on random raid members, which really hurts. There needs to be an interrupter on him all the time he is active, even below 50 energy when the rest of the raid have gone off to damage the newly-activated construct. When his shield goes up, stray attacks like dots will increase his casting frequency of Arcane Annihilator, so one interrupter will not be enough. So you may be needed to help interrupt here, coordinate with your interrupter, although now skull bash can miss it's not guaranteed. Last time I alternated interrupts with a rogue, calling out on vent who's turn it was to interrupt.

Magmatron
The fire construct, his abilities are not that interesting if you are his tank. However, he does do Acquiring Target which sends red beam to the target and then fires a conal AOE to it. If you get targetted while tanking a different construct, the usual strategy is not to move and the rest of the raid get out of the way of the conal AOE, so erm stand still.

He also does Incineration Security Measures which damages the raid, so you can pop a cooldown at this point if you want, although it only does 60k damage which on a health pool of 150k, is not that much to worry about. Your friendly tank healer should be able to cope, still such magic damage is what the Mirror of Broken Images is all about.

Electron
The electrical construct, he is very straightforward to tank. He will cast Lightning Conductor on a raid member,  who must move away from people. If it is cast on you while tanking him or another construct, you have to stay put and get the melee to run away, or if you're on your own, it's all good.


Conclusion
Once you figure out what to do when tanking each construct, and what to watch out for when another construct is active, the fight settles into a rhythm and will soon be over. Nice loot is Poison Protocol Pauldrons and Lightning Conductor Band.

Is the end of Heroics CC in sight?

Last night I ran Blackrock Caverns in a mostly guild group of Shaman, Paladin, Mage, Boomkin and myself as the furry bear tank. Despite having a fair amount of crowd control available, I found that more often than not, we just CCed one of the mobs and I would tank the rest, on pulls of up to 5. Despite the group being in a mixture of half heroic gear and half reputation epics, the pulls all went well.

Now, the first time I tanked a heroic I had to use all the crowd control available, I even had to CC some mobs myself, I was only wanting to take two mobs max at once. In other runs I've been DPS on, the tank has not CCed anything, although I put that down to them being a paladin and having the AOE threat to pull it off. Now I am thinking when I get full 359 epics (and a swipe on a 3 second cooldown), I will be able to tank everything in a mob pack and just mark up a skull and cross.

I'm somewhat surprised that we can dispense with crowd control in Heroics in the first tier of the expansion, I thought it would take until the Firelands raid hit.

I am still having to work to hold threat on well geared DPS when we are on a single target, not sure how it will go with AOE tanking. Perhaps along with their plan to nerf content, Blizzard will also buff AOE threat moves to keep up.

Barely tanking Halls of Origination normal

Welcome the Halls of Origination normal, a level 85 dungeon located in Uldum, containing 7 bosses! 3 are needed to get the instance achievement, the other 4 are optional. I always without fail get lost in here.

As ever the Sword and Board cheat sheets are great for quick reminders about what to do. For the longer waffle, here we go...

Trash
Not a lot to mention here, at some point there is a suspiciously empty tunnel. When you wander down it, a load of non-elite beatles and an elite beatle spawn which need taking down.

In The Vault of Lights, there are packs of wandering Troggs, which will respawn so it is best to avoid them when possible. There are also 4 mini bosses you must kill to summon the second boss:

Air Warden
Avoid cyclones which knock you into the air, tank and spank.

Earth Warden
Does a front cone attack so keep him turned away from the party. Will do a stun for 4 seconds which makes threat generation interesting.

Flame Warden
Puts fire on the ground, the bad sort. Stacks a debuff which increases fire damage, so tank and spank quickly.

Water Warden
Puts water bubbles on the floor which should be avoided. Puts people into bubbles but the bubbles can be broken out of, but as a tank just tank it and hope the DPS break you out of a bubble.


Mandatory Bosses
Temple Guardian Anhuur
The first boss you need to defect to get past. He will put fires on the ground which should be avoided, and cast Divine Reckoning on someone which needs to be dispelled, or the target has to run away, otherwise 15k health will be taken from everyone in 15 yards.

At 2/3 and 1/3 health he shields, becomes un-damageable and channels an AOE damage spell. At this point two of the party needs to jump down either side of the platform and flick two switches, which turns off his shield, the come back up being chased by snakes, while having someone up the top to interrupt the AOE spell as soon as his shield drops.

Good job that man, having an uber defense mechanism which can be turned off by two players, guarded only by snakes. On normal the switches are instant I think, so you just send two DPS down there, if you are a cat you can switch to bear to soak some snake damage.

When the snakes get back up top with the DPS, swipe and thrash to get aggro on them while everyone AOEs them down, then repeat.

He drops Poison Fang Bracers which I had for a while.

Anraphet
Exiting Anhuur's room you will come to a lift in a room with exits West and East. Go West to reach The Vault of Lights and Anraphet. After killing the 4 Wardens in the room, he will appear.

He will pick someone to cast Alpha Beam on, they just need to move out of it, although he doesn't pick the tank. It will leave a purple puddle on the floor which then has to be avoided for the rest of the fight.

He will cast Nemesis Strike on the tank, which should be dispelled.

The big ability is Omega Stance where he does lots of damage to everyone in the party, which the healer has to heal through. This is the time to pop a cool-down like Barkskin or Survival Instincts to help out. On normal the damage is not that severe, 40k damage over 8 seconds, so with a 100k health pool it can be survived easily.

Rajh
To get to Rajh your party needs to go back to the lift room, get on the lift and activate the console. Rajh is to the north.

Rajh will summon Sun Orb which should be interrupted, otherwise it will likely strike someone and do lots of damage. He also does a leap ability which can be interrupted, but the person he leaps to gets a warning so should really get out of the way.

I seem to remember this leaves fire on the ground, so we swapped sides of the room after his first Blessing of the Sun.

All the while fire cyclones are whirling around the room, which should be avoided.

At certain times when he runs out of energy Rajh will head to the center of the room and channel an AOE called Blessing of the Sun which the healer needs to heal through, you can pop a cool-down here. This also increases damage done to him by 100% so this is also a good time to pop Berserk. Generally the party will group up on him so that AOE heals can work, and the melee can get stuck in.


Optional Bosses

Earthrager Ptah
Bonestorm! You might recognise this guy from such instances as ICC10 or ICC25. Having been given a cheap, Hasbro-style repaint, Lord Marrow... I mean Earthrager Ptah is back. This fight is very straightforward for a tank, just aim him away from the party (nasty cleaves abound) and tank him.

In phase two he falls apart and summons some adds which you need to pick up while the DPS kill em. Throwing a skull onto one of them helps a lot here to set a kill order. Then its back to phase 1 where you just like tank him (and stuff).

Mouth of the Earth is all you're looking for here.

Isiset
One of the remaining constructs of magic in the upper area, Isiset is the lightning/sky boss. During the fight she casts Supernova which you need to turn away from, so you are not facing her at the end of the Supernova cast. This is just like Eradic the Pure in Trial of the Champion.

At various times she will cast Celestial Call and call a familiar, which you can pick up and the DPS should take down. At 66% she splits into three Aspects; Astral Rain, Veil of Sky, and Celestial Call. Taking down one of them makes her reappear, then at 33% she will split back into the two you didn't kill. The best order we find is Rain, then Call then Sky.

Ring of Blinding Stars is what you're after here.

Ammunae
Ammunae is the life magic construct in the upper area. He will spawn seedling pods which the DPS should kill as a priority. He will sometimes spawn Spores which can be killed and then drop a cloud, which you need to drag him away from so the melee aren't standing in it, or stand the boss in it so it will damage him too.

For our attempt we used a Shaman Fire Elemental, who will take care of all the seedling pods without any DPS having to worry.

Sadly Ammunae has no useful drops for us :(

Setesh
Setesh is the purple death construct in the upper area. This fight was judged as a little tricky by my group, as it involves a lot of adds. It is also quite a lot of fun for the tank.

In this fight you don't tank Setesh, he just throws shadow bolts at random people. He summons meteors which leave void zones on the ground, both of which need to be avoided. Most importantly, he summons shadow portals, from which spawn a Void Sentinel, some Void Wurms and a Void Seeker. However, as soon as the portals appear the DPS need to kill the portal, so that it dies asap, thus limiting how many adds come out. What happens to the adds?

Why, that's your job as tank. You need to get to the portals (and can help DPS them), but then pick up anything which comes out and keep it tanked for the whole of the fight. You actually tank the Void Sentinels for the whole fight, but to limit damage done to yourself, you can actively kill the Void Wurms using Mangle, Maul and auto-attacks. Trying to tank everything results in a lot more damage, so I advise you to kill those Wurms asap, while tanking the Sentinels.

He seems to swap sides of the room and wander around when he summons the portals, so you need to be quite mobile. While spamming Swipe and Thrash to keep those adds on you. This fight is the ideal time for Nature's Grasp, which will entangle some of the adds and reduce the damage you take. Then you just rely on the DPS to kill him off, and your healer to keep you alive while 10s of Void thingies are pounding on your furry ass.

After the fight we are after Hieroglyphic Vest.

Conclusion
HoO is quite a nice instance if you are after a lot of Justice Points, because of the sheer number of bosses in it. However, once it comes up as the daily heroic and people are after the VP, I imagine the optional bosses being skipped.

Bear armor - Like... what?

After some theory from various Druid bloggers, Blizzard have finally fessed up about what the hell they've been doing with Bear armor over the past few patches:

After the designers looked into this issue more, there appears to be a pretty complex series of bugs that may have led to where we are now. I'll do my best to explain.

Early on in Cataclysm, it was concluded that druid tanks took too much damage and we deployed a hotfix to buff their armor through Thick Hide. Originally, we had thought that 4.0.6 was just updating the Thick Hide tooltip as well as the armor display on the character sheet for the earlier hotfix, but we think now that the armor buff itself was actually correctly applied with 4.0.6, and the previous hotfix had never taken hold properly.

The reason we missed this is because there is no easy way to know what your armor actually is when you can’t trust the tooltip – you have to have things beat on you and see how much damage you take. This test was tainted by a second bug however, where some druid characters were invisibly retaining the 12% damage reduction benefit of the obsolete Protector of the Pack talent. Even though we removed that talent, its effects were still benefitting some characters, and we didn't know who or how many. Again, there is no easy way to know if your druid was affected without a lot of testing. We knew about the Protector of the Pack bug but were hesitant to try and mess with it too much via hotfix since bear survivability was where we wanted it to be for those characters and we didn’t want to risk making anything worse. In any event, those characters appeared to be taking the correct amount of damage, so we thought the Thick Hide hotfix was successful. In reality, we think we were seeing the Protector of the Pack damage reduction and not the Thick Hide armor buff.

We believe the 4.0.6 patch finally removed the Protector of the Pack effects while finally getting the Thick Hide buff applied. Characters who had the Protector of the Pack benefit won’t see their survivability change much (they lost damage reduction while gaining armor), while characters who lacked that talent will see their survivability improve (they gained a lot of armor). The good news is that current bear survivability in 4.0.6 appears to be where we want it to be for everyone.

We’re still not 100% sure that the above explanation is what happened, but it seems consistent with our observations. Again, as of 4.0.6, bear armor should now be correct.

source

So here we have a hotfix which was applied to Thick Hide which had "never taken hold properly" whatever that means, in my mind it means the fix wasn't actually working and should have showed up under testing. But hold on, "there is no easy way to know what your armor actually is when you can’t trust the tooltip – you have to have things beat on you and see how much damage you take". Except if you actually have access to the code and logs and traces from the game, of course, then I would expect you to actually be able to debug the damn thing and find out exactly what your armor is!

Then we get to the most weird part of this, that "some druid characters were invisibly retaining the 12% damage reduction benefit of the obsolete Protector of the Pack talent". I mean how on earth can that happen? Is World of Warcraft like The Matrix now, where things go on without actually being coded in? Even odder, "we didn't know who or how many" had this 12% damage reduction. There is no spoon! Where on earth is this behaviour stored in the WoW system, I had assumed it was in code somewhere, but clearly it is not if they can drop a fix which should remove some benefit and add some other benefit, and that only happens in a certain number of cases.

Of course now we have a potential loss of 6% attack power from Protector of the Pack, if you had the "ghost" version, which along with a nerf to damage output in 4.0.6, means potentially some threat loss. That may be fixed later, but will such a fix "take hold" given they seem to hotfix but cannot test their hotfixes actually work? Or is there no problem and we will are indeed just fine? Only running some heroics and a raid or two will tell at this point. Words are failing me here so I will just stop writing now. Lol.

Bear tank crowd control

I'd like to talk about crowd control options when you are Bear tanking, which you personally as the tank can bring. In today's heroics, you need all the crowd control you can get, and sometimes you need to step up and do it yourself. Doing Shadowfang Keep with 2 mages and a warlock for CC? Isn't everything in there undead? Argh!

Cyclone
Cyclone is on a 1.7 second cast and immobilizes the target for only 6 seconds. It does work on everything, but 6 seconds isn't a decent amount of time and is probably only useful when other forms of CC won't work. Casting it will push you out of Bear form too. I've not used this at all so far.

Entangling Roots
Entangling Roots is on a 1.7 second cast and will root something in place for 30 seconds. It works on everything and works everywhere since patch 4. With the Glyph it is instant cast (although in 4.0.6 at the moment, they have nerfed the glyph badly). Casting it will push you into caster form.

This is a prime form of crowd control and I use it at the beginning of a pull while in caster form. I'll root a mob just before the other CC goes off, shift into bear and then FFF the skull while it runs toward me. Combine with having your own Regrowth ticking on you, you can easily crowd control one mob and get the others. Because Roots works on any type of mob, it is a most excellent filler CC if the DPS don't have useful CC, and it tends to break just after the primary kill target dies (or the skull and cross if you're lucky), so 30 seconds is a good duration.

Hibernate
Some Druids don't even train this, but hibernate is a useful CC spell with a 1.5 second cast. Of course it can be used on beasts, so you can hibernate the pets of various hunter mobs in instances.

However it can be used on Dragonkin, and this is where the bear (or cat) becomes a powerhouse of crowd control in Grim Batol. Polymorphs don't work on dragonkin, fear will (so will Hunter traps and Rogue Sap), but if you are mage-heavy you are stuffed. In Grim Batol I have had to root one mob then quickly hibernate another dragonkin, get another feared and tank the rest. Being at maximum range while trying this trick is important, as you are in caster form for around 1.5 seconds after the roots go off. If you're quick on the keys!

Whether to prefer Hibernate or Entangling Roots is tricky, hibernate lasts 40 second vs 30 seconds for roots, you are in Bear so cannot recast either, but roots won't always break with damage whereas hibernate will. I tend to go with Roots usually because it works on everything, using Hibernate if needed.

Nature's Grasp
For kiting many adds, Nature's Grasp is awesome. It is instant cast and does not push you out of Bear form, so on fights where you need to pick up adds and they are not being nuked (like Setesh in Halls of Origination) NG is very useful.

Of course as a Bear, you are the crowd control for anything which hasn't been CCed, but that would make a short post!

Barely tanking The Stonecore normal

The Stonecore is one of two level 82-84 instances. This one is located in Deepholm right on the side of the Temple of Earth. I tanked this at level 83 after I had secured a staff upgrade from questing in Deepholm, and had the quest from Therazane to complete. Rurikhan has posted a video for tanking The Stonecore as a Warrior, but the it's a worthwhile watch. Sword and Board have another great cheat sheet which covers The Stonecore and The Vortex Pinnacle.

Trash Talk
The trash is pretty fine actually, with the exception of the Stonecore Sentry which will summon more mobs from nearby, so must die quickly. The Stonecore Bruisers also patrol around and in the trash at the end, you need to be careful to pull them individually while not fighting trash packs. At one point, I ended up with two of these plus a whole trash pack on me, and predictably died.

The Crystalspawn Giants do an attack called Quake which, if you are on the ground when it goes off, does 21k nature damage to you. On normal this can be ignored pretty much, but on heroic its 51k damage, so it is best to practise jumping so you are mid-air when Quake goes off.

Corborus
Corborus is the first boss, a giant gyreworm. This is a 2 phase fight, in phase 1 he is above ground and will occasionally send ping shards/spikes onto a player, like Archavon in VoA. I didn't get these shards as the tank, so it may not be something you need pay attention to. There is also a debuff the healer needs to clear. The phase 1 is very much tank and spank.

Phase 2 is when he burrows under the ground, and lots of little adds appear. These should be tanked as best you can, Swipe and Thrash show their weakness here but them and Demo Roar are better than nothing. The adds don't seem to do enough damage to warrant obsessive tanking, but its better to try to get them than do nothing. The other thing is that Corborus will put an earthquake effect on the ground where he is going to appear, get out of that effect or take damage.

He has no loot for Bears as such, and only Key to the Endless Chamber for cats.

Slabhide
Slabhide is a big dragon you face at the end of a run down, where spikes will drop from the ceiling. Just step out of the shadows and they will miss you. The boss himself does not a lot.

Keep him faced away from the party so his Sand Blast misses them. The earth will shift where he will summon lava pools, just keep out of them. He will fly into the air and drop loads of the spikes down on the ground, just avoid standing in the shadow and you will not get hit. However, these spikes block line of sight, so you need to figure out where your healzor is and make sure they are in LOS. I managed to get out of LOS at some points, so popping a cooldown like Barkskin will mean you don't drop health too much.

Other than those abilities, this is a tank and spank. He doesn't drop any tank loot but does drop a mount apparently on both modes.

Ozruk
Ozruk is a giant stone guy who has gone a bit mad, so Therazane reluctantly asks you to kill him. He has a number of abilities which tanks need to practise avoiding and are probably lethal on heroic mode.

First up is Ground Slam which does a lot of damage, so you must avoid it. It is a 3 second cast, so is quite difficult to avoid. The advice on Wowhead is to run between his legs - he stands still while casting and I assume you then run back again. Missing this isn't totally deadly but it can take half or more of your health. I strafed round 90 degrees to his side, which also worked to avoid the effect.

His second ability is Shatter which on normal you get no warning for, however it is only 31k damage, so you probably don't even need a cooldown and can just eat it.

Notable loot is the Pendant of the Lightless Grotto which would be very nice with the crit strike reforged to dodge.

High Priestess Azil
This humanoid type does a few interesting abilities and is a 2 phase fight. She will do a force grip and grab the tank, slamming them into the ground for 20k damage. This can cause threat issues if you are trying to get a lead on her, so Berserk is handy to catch up again here. The force grip can apparently be interrupted, but it is on a 1 second cast, so it's unlikely it will be. As it only does 20k damage the biggest problem is that you can't generate threat while gripped.

A more interesting ability is that she places gravity wells on the floor, which are like big black holes. These will suck players in and do damage if you get too close, so avoid stuff on the ground again.

There are adds who rush to her aid at several points during the fight, these are weak and only have 10k health so I found the DPS were able to kill them by themselves. However they can be damaged if they run through the gravity wells, and keep an eye on your healer at least, who will appreciate being saved from the adds.

In phase 2 she casts a shield, becomes undamageable and stands on the platform. During this phase the tank just tries to pick up the adds, and everyone avoids the big boulders she throws at you.

The fight alternates between phases and eventually she is dead, dropping Darkling Staff and Helm of Numberless Shadows and Leaden Despair looks interesting.

Conclusion
The Stonecore is a nice instance, very linear but on normal it is pretty easy, despite being a level 83 instance and therefore I assumed a "proper" challenge.

Leveling to 85 in Deepholm and Twilight Highlands

Happy New Year! The last two weeks have been a busy period with my grind up to 85 and a few instance runs.

Deepholm
After hitting 82, I went off into Deepholm hoping to snag some nice quest rewards. After questing out almost the entire zone, I got a Blacksoul Polearm which is a lovely 381 polearm. I also got the Leggings of Fragmented Hope and Worldbinder Signet from quests.

This zone is very nice and the quests are pretty cool, but for the gear-obsessed it is very important as you only unlock the Therazane faction 10 quests or so from the end of the zone. This faction has a nice ring for level 85 and various shoulder enchants, so it should be on your list to grind up to exalted.

The Stonecore & The Vortex Pinnacle
After finishing Deepholm I was a fair way into level 83, so I decided to tank the level 82-84 instances of The Stonecore and The Vortex Pinnacle. As I have considered earlier, there are some nice loot items in these instances, but really I want to get a first look at them, before I have to tank them in heroic mode. Unfortunately by this point the guild had moved onto heroics, so I read up and entered the Dungeon Finder. Surprisingly both went well, The Stonecore is a lot of fun and the bosses are quite different, whereas The Vortex Pinnacle was mostly tank-and-spank fights with some small frills. Having run each one, I was level 84 and ready to hit the final zone for what I hoped were some awesome gear upgrades.

Twilight Highlands
The Warlord's quest board sends you to Twilight Highlands at level 84, and it is well worth going there. Even if the starter quests are actually in Orgrimmar and Aszhara!

Twilight Highlands is home to the Dragonmaw Clan for Horde (and Wildhammer Clan for Alliance). Luckily it takes only a few quests to unlock the Dragonmaw Clan, however apart from the quests, there was one big reason for me to quest in TH. The Torth-Slayer's Staff is an item level 333 staff, which means it will get you into heroics, and after 176 out of 384 quests it was mine.

I was expecting some other rewards, and there is the Shocktrooper Hood which I am using, but the other leather feral item is Garona's Finest Leggings. Now given that I got to honoured with Dragonmaw and bought Leggings of the Impenitent far before I could get Garona's leggings, I decided to leave Twilight Highlands once I'd hit 85 and go grind some rep elsewhere.


The Grind
Now at level 85 there is a whole load of reputation grinds to do. I have a tanking head arcanum to get, a weapon from the Tol Barad faction, exalted shoulder inscription to grind for, plus a couple of exalted items from Guardians of Hyjal and Dragonmaw. I also have to run instances on heroic to get drops, reputation and justice points. So there is plenty left to do for a grind.

Barely tanking Throne of the Tides normal

So Throne of the Tides. This instance is located deep underwater in Vashj'ir. Again check pwnwear.com for a guide on how to find the entrance. Now there is a quest for Throne given inside the entrance, unfortunately according to Wowhead you have to complete all the quests in the Vashj'ir zone before you can pick it up. This is a shame as one of the rewards is a pretty nice chest piece. Still, no way am I doing all of Vashj'ir for something I'll replace at level 83 with some Hyjal reputation reward.

The trash again was reasonable, we did use crowd control on some of the bigger pulls, using mind control and letting the mind controlled mob die. The packs of goblin mages and hunters were a bit of a sod, initially we thought to AOE them, but unfortunately they do a load of damage to their target, so we switched back to good old single target DPS. This trash will be a bugger on heroic I suspect.

Lady Naz'jar
Lady Naz is a fairly interesting fight. She will firstly do a big attack called Shock Blast which you should interrupt, I was able to Skull Bash her reliably every time.

Her other gimmick is the old circles of stuff under people, she will cast blue circles under a party member (including the tank), and after a few seconds a big geyser will erupt and throw the party member into the air, thus interrupting casts and giving fall damage. This needs to be moved out of, including the tank.

At 60% she summons 3 adds and goes immune, they are 2 casters and 1 melee type. It is best to get the party to kill the casters first and interrupt their chain lightning if possible, then the melee dude. Some chaos happened as I tried to tank all three! This is also a DPS race, she comes out of her bubble after a fixed amount of time, so you need to be quick killing those adds. Then things are back to normal, and she will do this again at 20%.

Sadly she doesn't seem to drop anything useful for Druids, so best kill her quick and move on.

Commander Ulthok
This guy is a big Faceless type mob. He will do an attack which drops a big void zone underneath him, so the tank needs to kite him around. I tried waiting until he cast, then moving backward, but this is prone to error - a small delay and you will get the void zone under you and take massive damage. I think the best approach is probably to keep him moving slowly around the outside of the room. I have also seen an approach on Rurikhan's video where you strafe when he casts the spell, which is quicker than walking backward. You still need to move him around if the space to the left and right are full of void goodness, but this is a promising tactic.

Ulthok also occasionally grips someone into him and carries them for a bit, then drops them. If this happens and he is still stood on one of his void zones, bye bye party member. So it is doubly important to keep the ground under him clear.

Loot of note is Caridean Epaulettes which are very nice.

Erunak Stonespeaker
Now you may have seen him as you quest around Vashj'ir, but I have not yet finished all the zone quests, so I'm not sure what he is doing in Throne of the Tides.

In any case, he has a few special abilities to worry about. Firstly is a massive magma cone attack which makes sure you need to keep him facing away from the party. Then there is a lava bolt which does 20k to a random party member, which I think can be interrupted, or just healed through. Given healers have to watch their mana these days, interrupting seems wise.

At 50% the squid sat on his head will release itself and go wandering around, this is then a tank-and-spank fight. The squid, Mindbender Ghur'sha, will put a big cloud of bubbling green gas under itself which stops spells and does damage, so get out of it. He will sometimes shield himself, and any damage done will actually heal him, so the DPS need to be watching for that and stop damage.

After a while, the squid then latches onto someone in the party and mind controls them! You then need to tank them while they are spanked by the group to 50% health, after which the squid detaches and it is back to tank-and-spank on Mindbender.

After a lot of running around madly, we got this guy down. Notable loot is the Porcelain Crab which I actually got, woot.

Ozumat
The final encounter features Neptulon standing in a room, channeling magic to purify the water while you defend him from various waves of adds (think Tribute of Ages), then you get to spank Ozumat the giant octopus. Bad octo!

The first wave consists of Murlocs which can be AOEd and Faceless ones which can be tanked (Vicious Mindlashers I think). There will also be a big faceless one who should be tanked, the Unyielding Behemoth, he does an front cone spray attack occasionally so should be kept away from the party, while the smaller ones can be left for the DPS to kill off as they do magic attacks mostly. Waves of these mobs come a few times until phase 2 hits and new adds appear.

In phase 2, you get more Faceless adds who channel a spell onto Neptulon, Faceless Sappers, and during the phase several Blight Beasts (like Blood Beasts from Deathbringer Saurfang) will appear. The DPS should be killing the Sappers while you try to kite the beasts around. There are also black puddles on the floor, but we all know to avoid things on the floor by now (I hope). Some crazy spamming of Feral Faerie Fire is done in this phase to keep the beast's interest and you can even help out DPSing the Sappers.

Then its into phase 3, where you all get super powered and Ozumat attaches itself to the outside of the room and tries to kill Neptulon. Just clean up any left over beasts and wander across to the room wall, Ozumat can be targeted and attacked. Now if you get right up against the wall, a bug will make him disappear, but you can still attack. Once the beasts are dead, you can even go Cat form for some awesome John Madden type action! This is a really fun fight with a lot of running around, feral charging everything in sight.

Loot of note is Nautilus Ring, which I didn't get.

Conclusion
This instance felt a little harder than Blackrock Caverns, there is a bit more tanking trickery involved and sudden death situations to skillfully avoid (or not, as the case may be). It is also really quite pretty.

Barely tanking Blackrock Caverns normal

Last night, on the first day of the Cataclysm expansion, I went off into Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides normal modes for some Bear Druid tanking action.

Known as BRC, Blackrock Caverns is right inside Blackrock Mountain on the front way into Blackrock Spire. However, there is a cunning quest in Mount Hyjal called This Can Mean Only One Thing which the Finkle Einhorn (from UBRS fame) gives. This will give you a handy transport to BRC, so you can discover the entrance and then use the LFD tool from then on.

The instance itself is quite linear and has pulls of 5-6, so we actually used crowd control on some of them, just to be safe (and for practice really). The trash wasn't too bad, with some notable exceptions. Twilight Sadists will do a channeled effect which immobilizes the tank, the big Defiled Earth Ragers drop a Meteor on you which does loads of damage, but if the party is stacked the damage is split (like in The Arcatraz).

There was also some craziness given my single AOE move, Swipe, is on a 6 second cooldown and I have no Thrash until level 81. Onto the bosses.

Rom'ogg Bonecrusher
We cleared the room before engaging, as we read there was a lot of moving about. This guy was quite straightforward, he will pull the group in and put them all in Chains of Woe, at this point one targettable thing will appear, which is very easy to spot if you have nameplates turned on. DPS it down and the chains will release. Of course while you are in chains, he is doing the Skullcracker move, so you need to get out then get to around 20 yards out otherwise it will totally one shot the unattentive.

Notable Druid loot is Skullcracker Ring, but he didn't drop that.

Corla, Herald of Twilight
Corla has two adds in the normal mode instance, which she sends beams toward. The beams can be broken by putting someone in the way, much like Netherspite in good old Karazhan. They will stack a buff on whoever is in the way and if it reaches 100, they turn drakonid and become hostile, party members included. Now I have read a strategy where you get one add to turn, kill it, then the other, then her. But we didn't do that.

We had two groups of 2 party members per beam, each group would alternate who stood in the way so each person didn't get 100 stacks. I just tanked her, she didn't do anything special really. We did have a fear ward on me and the healer, so this likely helped a lot. The strat sortof worked, she was at 10% when our shadow priest turned dragonlike, but I just tanked him as well and we killed her off.

For a tank, this is like tank and spank, with being ready on the Berserk should you get feared. Notable loot is Grace of the Herald for Kitties, and some strength ring but I believe Bears no longer want strength items. Of course none of this dropped.

Karsh Steelbender
This big drakonid guy stands in a room with a massive grate in the middle, through which lava is falling. The outside of the room is lined with non elite mobs. We didn't kill these mobs, but got 3 during the fight, so I would say they must die first!

He initially has a buff which reduces all damage by 99%, but if the tank puts him in the grate, the lava will melt his armor for a while so he can take damage. Unfortunately, the lava also stacks another buff on him which increases his damage, and he does an AOE fire damage too! So the game here is to drag him into the grate area just long enough for the buff on him to get to 4-5 stacks, any more and the AOE and subsequent tank damage will kill you all. When the buff drops off, repeat.

Now with Shadowed Unit Frames, the buff is very small so the first time it got to 8 stacks, I used Survival Instincts at this point! You only need him in the fire for like 2-3 seconds maximum, those stacks build up quickly.

Notable loot is nothing really, there is a strength cloak, which may be an upgrade if you still have a strength cloak. After getting some non-elite adds and killing the guy, he sadly didn't drop any useful loot.

Beauty
Going further with the Finklestein and UBRS references, Beauty is a giant corehound and is probably the counterpart to The Beast. She has 3 pups in front of her and another at the back.

First job is the unpleasant murder of corehound puppies to attend to. These can be pulled individually, they will do a flame spit so turn them from the group. They also drop a puddle of lava under you, so you need to get out of that asap.

Then onto Beauty herself. This for the tank is tank and spank, except for a fear she will do. We tanked her right at the back of her cave so we didn't get feared into the next room and the (uncleared) mobs. A Berserk is handy for breaking out of the fear.

She will also randomly charge party members but she will come running back to the tank after that, like a good doggie. Who wants to eat you. Bad doggie! She does a flame spit as well, so turn her from the group.

After some running around Beauty died, notable loot is Beauty's Chew Toy which did drop, but it looked much equivalent to my gemmed and patched ICC legs, so I passed.

Ascendant Lord Obsidius
This is a fun one. Obsidius has two mobs with him and they put a stacking healing debuff on their target, so you don't want them targetting the tank. Luckily they can be kited.

So the tank just tanks Obsidius and the rest of the party run around like mad being chased by Shadows. After a while, he will emote and swap places with one of his shadows and all aggro is reset, so the tank just needs to pick him up again. The running around madly is certainly fun while tanking this one.

Notable loot is Twitching Shadows, Sandshift Relic, and a strength necklace. I was lucky enough to win the Sandshift Relic, so he will need to die again so I can get the cloak.

Conclusion
Blackrock Caverns is a fun instance and didn't seem too difficult if you had been grinding Emblems of Triumph in Wrath and have a set of item level 232 gear. Some of the boss encounters require a bit from the tank, and some are quite straightforward, so a good mixture. There is a tanking cheat sheet posted at the Sword and Board blog.

I also did Throne of the Tides, I'll do a post on that soon.

Tanking... ICC things

It's amazing, but I have recently been tanking stuff in Icecrown Citadel. It all started with the guild "Noob" run, where alts are encouraged to raid in unfamiliar roles. I saw a chance and put my name down for tanking duties, and so managed to run ICC 10 and off tank the Lower Spire and Rotface and Festergut. To my surprise the experience was quite stress-free, the prime requirements seem to be to do the right thing in the fight, often this is simpler than what the DPS have to do, and of course have an appropriate level of gear.

Now the ICC 30% buff and the lack of the dodge debuff takes care of the gear, so my fairly item level 232 gear is good enough for ICC now.

I then signed up for another run as off tank, and then managed to do Professor Putricide as the Abom driver, lots of fun, plus the Blood Princes and Twilight Queen Lanathel. We ran out of time on Sindragosa.

This experience has made me a whole lot more positive about tanking stuff come Cataclysm, I can see that the gear requirements for raiding will be the major issue, whereas the tactics seem to be some taunt-swapping, a bit of movement and some cool-down use. However compared to the crazy dancing and target swapping I had to do as DPS, some of the fights as a tank are quite mundane (Blood Council) and some are a lot of fun (Gunship away tank).

Tanking gear list and amount of Triumph

Gear stolen from BBB.

Shoulders 45 triumph
Helm 75 triumph
Cloak I can haz one from Ahune
Chest 50 triumph
Bracers 15 WG tokens
Hands already got
Belt 28 conquest
Legs 50 triumph
Boots 15 WG tokens
Ring 1 35 triumph
Ring 2 35 triumph
Neck 19 conquest
Trinket 1 50 triumph
Idol I haz.

Weapons are all drops from H TOTC, H HOR, FOS, or the Hilt from ICC 5 mans.

The total triumph needed is 387 and 30 WG tokens. Ouch.

Other ideas are to get these shoulders for 40 WG tokens, but that will likely take longer than the 75 triumph. These bracers can be had for 43k honour should a lot be left after grinding out 40 WG tokens. This belt is also 34k honour. Boots can be had for 34k honour too.

Doing all that means 314 triumph, 40 WG marks and 111k honour.

Shoulders 40 WG tokens
Helm 75 triumph
Cloak I can haz one from Ahune
Chest 50 triumph
Bracers 43k honour
Hands already got
Belt 34k honour
Legs 50 triumph
Boots 34k honour
Ring 1 35 triumph
Ring 2 35 triumph
Neck 19 conquest
Trinket 1 50 triumph