We killed Cho’Gall on Tuesday and are now 10/12 normal modes.

How do you convince your guild that they aren’t doing out enough dps for their gear level when you don’t even dps and the guild is progressing (slowly)?

It’s a sticky situation because I’m one of the few people that actually thinks there is a problem.

The comeback of CC in Cataclysm is glorious and complicated.

There is far more crowd control in the game than there was in BC which was the last time most people used it in PvE. Infact, there is much more CC in the game than there are markers for them.

Thats possibly a topic for another day.

As a tank I am usually the person that marks and assigns CCs.

For marking quickly and easily I use RaidMobMarker HUD.

This is a remake of the addon BaudMark, an addon that I have used and recommended for ages but has sadly fallen to neglect.

It creates a flyout circle of raid markers when you press the assigned hotkey (preset hotkey not included). Left clicking assigns the selected mark to your target, right clicking clears it.

Putting up raid marks becomes much faster which means faster pulls which means a happier group.

Now to get those pesky assignments out. I had been searching for a good way to get this done for weeks. Calling it out in vent was ok, when I was able to get a word in edgewise, but when someone forgot what they were assigned to, I had to try to recall who I had assigned.

I tried making a macro so if anyone forgot I could just hit it again, but that was a massive pain in the neck if the types of mobs changed or someone left the raid.

I needed an addon.

I found CC Mate. It looks at who you have in your group and gives you a dropdown for each mark to assign someone to it. When you finish assigning you just hit the announce button and it announces your assignments into chat.

Technically you can put raid marks up with CC mate as well, though as far as I’ve been able to tell you have to have a CC assigned to the symbol to put that mark up which can make putting kill order marks annoying.

EDIT: There is an option to allow you to mark skull and cross and the addon, and it automatically checks the mobs type against your CC options, so it wont let you mark a Banish on a dragonkin, for instance.

So if you’d rather just one addon to get all your marking needs done this is a good option.

I ran into a little hiccup on Sunday just a few hours before a raid.

If you have a key chain authenticator they may become desynced from the server.

It started out with difficulty logging in, for a few weeks I would have to try 3-5 times in order to get a key that would finally go through. But on Sunday, after a few days of not logging in at all, it became so bad that I was completely unable to log into anything battle.net.

If you catch it early enough then you can log into your battle.net account and do a hard reset by taking your authenticator off your account and then putting it back on immediately to resynchronize the internal clocks.

If your like me and didn’t look a solution up until it got too far out of hand to do that, then you have the call account support for the guy on the other end of the line to reset it for you. I waited 20 minutes on hold and had my problem fixed in 5 so it’s really not that big of a deal.

I have five characters in heroic ready gear. But I only have 4 level 85 characters.

With no gear cheating, coolio.

Well, this screenshot is from last week so I actually have 5 8s all in heroic ready gear, but thats not nearly as interesting.

While I was glad to skip farming the same three normal instances over and over and over to get the same two drops that never show up, it felt a little bit like cheating to queue up for a heroic as soon as the yellow flash lit up my screen.

Woo just over 100 words in this little essay, I’m bushed.

CDs can be useful in multiple situations, not always just when you’re about to die.

Shield Wall

If the group is taking a ton of AoE damage and you have about 60% health, go ahead and pop a Shield Wall to give the healer enough time to get the rest of the group up without having to focus on you.

The more common uses of this CD are when you are about to take a big hit that may kill you, or when you are at low health and need to reduce your incoming damage so the healer can catch up.

As a general rule of thumb, I try to pop Shield Wall at the 25-40% health range depending on the damage I’m taking and how well the healer(s) have been able to bounce me back unless theres something I need to save it for.

Last Stand

Cooldowns that  boost your health temporarily are at the same time very interesting and very boring I think. It doesn’t reduce the damage your taking in, and there can be some occasions where popping them only makes you harder to heal, a heal won’t bring the same percents as they would without the CD.

They act very much like mana sponge CDs, it gives you a greater buffer of health, but a healer will have to pump more mana into you in order to get you up.

I’ll only very rarely use Last Stand type abilities in Heroics, usually only when a pug healer has died to a mechanic and I have to live long enough to either let the remaining dps burn down the boss or pray for some Mending procs and solo the boss.

In raids these abilities become marginally better with the addition of multiple healers and larger boss hits.

Health Buff CDs are interesting because as they give you a boost based on a percentage of your max health, they interact with other items and abilities in fun ways. Unfortunately, most of those ways can simply be macroed into set-and-forgetedness.

Last Stand type abilities should be used in conjunction with other healing CDs such as Frenzied Regeneration or Enraged Regeneration along with a healthstone and a health pot if you aren’t using armor potions.

Cds that heal a set amount, such as health stones and pots, should be used before you pop Last Stand in order to let your health multiply from as high a start point as possible. CDs that heal based on a percentage of health such as Enraged Regeneration should be used after Last Stand to get as much health back as possible.

useful macro:

Small Defensive CDs

Shield Block, Barkskin, and whatever those boring, non-rage using tanks use.

There are two ways to use these best. Macro them to a skill you use all the time so they’re up as much as possible. Or use them with Shield Wall or Survival Instincts to reduce the damage you’re taking even further.

I prefer the former method as it ultimately means your taking less damage throughout the entire fight than the later method.

The question becomes what skill to macro it to, you could do it to all of them, that would certainly give the buff the most uptime. but if you’re working on a fight such as Magmaw, Chimerion, or Algoloth, you’re going to be pressing most of your abilities even when the other tank has the floor.

Warriors and Death Knights have the perfect solution to this in the form of Revenge and Rune Strike respectively, which only proc off of avoidance/mitigation meaning you have to be actively holding threat (or being cleaved) on something for it to be usable.

You can also macro it to your Taunt buttons, but that hardly helps  on bosses you don’t have to taunt.

Once again I’ve made a post thats validated my choice to switch mains -sigh-.

Ever been sitting in the LFD queue, then when the window finally pops you see the “Dungeon in Progress” tag. You click to be let into the dungeon, maybe someone DCed, maybe they had to go settle their crying child, maybe you just don’t want to sit int he dps queue for another hour. Whatever the reason is, you get inserted into a group thats already downed a boss.

Then it happens before you’ve even gotten all the way through the load screen.

“You better not suck like the last guy we had!”

“You better know how to CC unlike that last mage!”

“You better be able to hold agro tank!”

“You better heal better than the last guy priest!”

It’s always enough to send my eyes rolling. Its almost as annoying as hearing “Are you a tank? I didn’t think so, so shut up.” when I’m playing my dps and healing toons. Thats a rant for another day.

When I get into a random group thats in progress I usually want to know why the last guy left, but its unfair to have the person who left’s (sometimes imaginary) faults get transfered immediately onto the new person.

There really is no point to this post, other than wanting to break my own silence. I need to get back into the practice of writing more often.

Stamina -
-This ain’t Lich King anymore, but a base health pool of around 150K unbuffed is first the priority.
-This should be accomplished through gems and enchants, though with gems, try to aim for socket bonuses, especially yellow ones with Puissant gems (stam/mastry).
-Under no circumstances should this stat be stacked to the exclusion of all else anymore.

Mastery -
-As soon as you have around 150k Health unbuffed, Mastery becomes top priority.
-Mastrey gives Block and Critical Block at a staggering rate: per item level it is the biggest bang for your buck in terms of taking less damage.
-In fact, the only time that it becomes a less desirable stat is when you have 100% critical block through mastery, a number that is currently unobtainable.
-Mastery should be stacked via gemming, and as much reforging as possible.

Parry -
-Sometimes an item will already have mastery on it so you just cant reforge the dodge on it to mastery again. In this case you would reforge parry.
-Parry works with the Hold the Line talent to increase your critical block by 10% (and crit strike, which plays nicely with Incite). I know what your thinking, my mastery does that!
-Yes it does! Thats why when you just can put any more mastery on a piece of gear, you should put parry on it.
-Parry works well with the trinket Throngus’s Finger if you have it, which gives ~8% dodge when proced. (~1.5% avg dodge.)
-Parry should be stacked in the form of reforging only when you cannot reforge mastery.

Dodge -
-Because you gotta have a stat that gets reforged away.
-Dodge is bottom priority in terms of avoidance, it doesn’t contribute to any buffs except revenge, and both block and parry already do that.
-Since dodge and parry now provide the same amount of avoidance per ilevel its become something of a junk stat for warriors.
-Dodge should not be stacked through any means.

Haste, Crit, Hit, and Expertise -
-These are the real junk stats. If they show up on your gear at all you should reforge them into one of the other stats.
-Hit and expertise can be situationally useful.
-You may want to aim for hit if you’re the only reliable interrupt and therefor you need your Shield Bash to never miss. This should never be a problem in 25mans though, and still pretty rare in 10s.
- Expertise is the highest threat stat for Warriors. Tank threat is so laughably overpowered right now that you shouldn’t need to stack this in the current tier. Bosses don’t parry haste anymore so this stat is simply not as useful as it once was.
-Never reforge or gem for these stats.

Quick Reforge Guide -

Haste < Crit. < Hit < Exp. < Dodge < Parry < Mastery

*Note -Don’t reforge parry into mastery, its wasteful if you’re already reforging dodge and such into parry. If you have an item that is parry/ mastery just leave it alone.

Take the stat on your gear that is furthest to the left, and reforge it to the stat that is furthest to the right as available. Keep in mind any caps you may be at or close to.

Yea yea no posts for a few weeks, when are you gonna post, why do you stop posting for weeks on end with no word, whats going on?

No one was really asking that, except one person, you know who you are, shut up, I know how long its been. I’ve had to level and gear up two different warriors because of you, thats what I’ve been doing! Busy busy bee.

Not really, I’m just lazy. But I’m still gonna blame you because it makes me feel better.

Ok, now, something to talk about… Uhm.

Raids? The raids are fun, the one’s Ive gotten into, Conclave and Halfus. Working and downing Conclave was more fun than one shotting Halfus I think.

I’ve already started my bad habit of guild hopping, I got to 85 on my Gnome on a new server, but for several reasons that really neither me nor the guild leader had very much control over it didn’t work out.

So I’m back on Crushridge once again, and its good to be horde. Applied to my partners guild once again, but this time on a character I actually want to play, so I’m hoping for the best but also preparing for the worst. That’s probably part of my problem.

Incoherency is as rampant in this post as laziness is in my daily lifestyle at the moment. I’ll try to work on a guide or something for next post.

Just to clarify a point on my last post, I love the new heroics, I just don’t love the people in them.

Also, I could stand for some of them to have some tank gear in them *coughdeadminescough* and/or be a little shorter so they don’t take 2~3 hours to run.

Having a few long instances is nice, but a couple of shorter ones I think I would like.

Short still whiny post is short and still whiny.