Kingslayers, All

After months of clearing out different amount of bosses in ICC, Knights of the Serpent and NightMarish Dreams finally downed Arthas.

Knights of the Serpent:
Signu - Prot Warrior
Sealedfaith - Resto Druid
Restitution - Resto Shaman
Speeddemon - Fury Warrior
Razulisback - Destro Warlock
Madamedeath - Shadow Priest

NightMarish Dreams:
Coterize - Destro Warlock
Fentwin - Survival Hunter
Kimyoko - Protection Paladin
Magetrink - Arcane Mage

Vengeance

Tanks - Vengeance
Imagine the tooltip for Vengeance read "Your damage scales with the rest of your raid as if you wore dps gear instead of tanking gear." That's pretty much it.

Knights of the Serpent Recruiting

Knights of the Serpent (Terenas-US) is recruiting a few members to raid 2-3 nights per week for 3 hours each night. Most of the members of the guild can fill multiple roles, we just need more people who can be reliable.

Please fill out the questionnaire below if you are interested:

Drunk and Half-naked

"We view Arms as a soldier, like a career military infantryman. Think Gladiator. We view Fury as the wild berserker from up in the hills. Think Braveheart or Conan. It's easy to argue that bleeds or mobility fit one or the other depending on your point of view. Arms feels tactical (in the sense of having an answer for various situations) and Fury feels reckless. The Arms warrior has pet names for all his weapons, while the Fury warrior shows up for battle drunk and half clothed."
- Ghostcrawler

Flame Leviathan Short Man Guide

Today, I present to you, a guide for taking out Flame Leviathan with 3 or 4 people. 3 is fairly easy. 4 is cake. If you do the trash without losing any vehicles, and you one-shot FL, this can be done in about 30-45 minutes.

Why:
Split about 175g
2 item level 219 pieces of gear or Abyss crystals
Assorted bars and eternals (I've seen the stuff below)
- 20x Saronite
- Titansteel bar
- 5-8 eternals
- 15-20 Volatile Blasting Trigger

What you need:
2 geared people
1 or 2 filler people

What you really want to bring:
Enchanter (to DE epics)
Engineer (to de-engineer)

Clearing Trash:
The easiest thing to do here is have the two geared people drive Demolishers and the other people in choppers. Have the choppers drive around with speed boost and round up just about everything they can get before getting to the giant spider-like robots. Demolishers should just use the #1 attack until a Colossus gets into range. Then, switch to the #2 attack (pyrite). Try to pull the spider bots individually, and take them out fast with #2. When the flying mobs spawn, switch to the passenger seat and use the anti-air cannon (#2) to get them down fast. Repeat until you get to the last 2 Colossi.

Preparing for the pull:
Before you pull the last two Colossi, you should have the extra people get into the passenger seat of the Demolisher. Have one Demolisher in the left corner and one in the right corner. Have the passengers shooting down pyrite (and refreshing your energy) as you take out the colossus.

Taking him out:
Once FL comes out, just spam #2. Make sure you keep it stacked to 10. Passengers will need to chain in more pyrite in order for you to keep the debuff up. He will start to pursue one of the Demolishers. Back up as far as you can into the corner . Do not try to get away, just keep unloading the pyrite.

Driving a Demolisher alone:
If you are 3manning this, you will have 1 demolisher that has no passenger. If you run out of pyrite, switch to the passenger seat to chain some more in. Do this as soon as your last pyrite is fired and only grab in one new pyrite. Doing so will give you time to get back into the driver seat and fire off more pyrite before the 10-stack wears off. One caveat is that the Demolisher has very little HP with no one in the drivers seat, so don't attempt this if he is actively hitting you.

Some tricks/tips:
If you wipe, you'll have the full set of vehicles very close for the next attempt. Drive all the vehicles just inside the perimeter.
Doing the above will give you somewhere to go if FL destroys your ride.
Paladins can Divine Shield to give them time to get to another vehicle
Priests can shield, PoM, Renew, and Holy Nova (I think dispersion works also).
Warriors can Shield Wall (if you remember to put a shield on and get in Defensive Stance).

So there you have it. If it's the weekly raid quest, you don't have to find much of a group anymore. Any way you look at it, it's quite a bit if extra cash or mats for not a whole lot of effort, but a whole lot of fun.

If you have any questions or additional tips, please leave them in the comments.

New Tricks for the Old Guild

Last night, my little guild cleared the first wing of ICC in 2.5 hours. This might not sound like too much of a feat, but let me explain.

This was the first time Knights of the Serpent has fielded a full 10-main raid since the early days of Naxx. This was the first time six of the ten had even attempted Marrowgar. We were two healing it. We had a couple undergeared dps.

The end result was no more than 3 attempts on any fight (2 on Marrowgar, 2 on Deathwhisper, 2 on Gunship, and 3 on Saurfang).

I was so proud, happy, and excited of/for our two healers. I was very doubtful that they'd be able to pull it off because I had seen the difficulties 2 healers have on the first two fights. They both stepped up to the plate to show me that they are epic healers.

My bear offtank did a supurb job with his assignments. He was quick to pick up any stray mobs. Best of all, he was perfect on taunts for Saurfang. I was doing quite poorly on my taunts and it led to a wipe once.

The DPS consistently performed excellently. I was surprised that our undergeared DPS contributed so greatly.

This guild used to be one of the top 25-man guilds in BC. Our goal for LK was to be one of the top 10man guilds on the server. We may be getting a late start, but I'd say we're on our way.

Congrats to everyone on the loot you received. Thank you for making your old raid/guild leader proud.

Old notes: Fixing Block

Back in July of last year, I spent a lot of time researching how I felt block should be fixed to make it useful and not overpowered. I never got around to actually writing the article, but I thought my notes might be of some interest to someone. I basically came up with a way to fix block, then used CharDev to test out what the results would look like in BiS gear.

Fixing Block:

Warriors and Paladins need 40-50% block rating and 10-15% dodge and 10-15% parry

Blocking needs to block a percentage of incoming damage.
- Same level has 50-75% damage reduction (50 is base, with SBV max contribution 25%)
- +5% for each level below
- -5% for each level above (60% vs raid bosses)
- SBV contribution scaling ends at 3000 SBV


BiS DK (25-man buffed) avoidance gear:
2 piece T8 (shoulders/chest)
26000 Armor (?)
47000 HP
31% dodge
20% parry

BiS Warrior (25-man buffed) block gear:
32000 armor
39000 hp
24% dodge
17% parry
52% block (2156, 18% DR)

Essentially, the DK was my control. Mostly wearing avoidance gear, but gemmed for stamina. The DK had 51% avoidance from dodge and parry (before diminishing returns). The Warrior has 41% with 52% block (geared exclusively for block rating). Against raid bosses, the warrior would be mitigating about 53% of the damage. The Warrior has much less health, so the extra mitigation did not seem to be that imbalanced.

I lot has changed in the game since then (DK health nerf, Warrior health buff). So, this is really more of record of my thoughts back then.

ICC First Wing Tips

Here are a few things I've learned about the first wing in ICC (I don't even know what the damn name of it is!). These are coming from an entry-level perspective and not a "farming it" perspective.

Marrowgar:
- Establish a movement guide for Coldflame. Most tanks move right on the first Coldflame, then left. Repeat as they diminish. It doesn't matter which way you move as long as you both go the same way.
- Stack all dps on top of each other inside Marrowgar's hitbox. They won't be hit by Coldflame and won't have to move for Bone Spikes (unless there are hunters in the group).

Deathwhisper:
- Stand in between two of the alcoves and Thunder Clap. Then target the 3rd add and Charge or Heroic Throw. (Not so much of an issue in 10-man as 25).

Gunship:
- Don't worry too much about killing the adds on your ship. Once DPS comes back from enemy ship, have them DPS adds to about 10-15%. Wait for the next portal, then kill them off (then you can be bored until the next one).
- When returning from the enemy ship, just walk off the edge. You'll be instantly teleported to the center of your ship.
- If you are boarding the enemy ship, stay near the edge. Healers will be able to reach you and they won't have to get directly into harm's way.

Saurfang:
- When a Blood Beast gets halfway between you and the DPS, give it a taunt (as long as you don't need to taunt Saurfang soon). This will give your DPS some more time to take it out.
- Save Shockwave for the Blood Beast spawn. Again, gives DPS more time to kill it.
- For Resto Shaman, Frost Shock the Blood Beasts if they are getting too close to DPS. Immediately follow up with Wind Shear to be sure you don't end up with aggro. *

If you have some other tips for those entering ICC, leave them in the tips.

* You should be able to use this macro because Wind Shear is off the GCD:
/tar Blood Beast
/cast [exists, nodead] Frost Shock
/cast [exists, nodead] Wind Shear
/targetlasttarget

Mountain Dew Game Fuel

AoE Tanking

Without further adieu, my long overdue post on AoE Tanking... for Warriors.

AoE Tanking is about 3 things:
- Group control
- Damage mitigation
- Threat output

The important thing about AoE pulls is making sure that all the mobs are actually IN the AoE. While this seems like an obvious thing to point out, it's surprising to see how often mobs are left out. If you have casters in the group, pull around a corner or charge in (if it's safe to do so). Either approach will bring the group into a small enough circle for your DPS to throw down their AoE.
Positioning yourself within the group of mobs is a very important aspect of AoE tanking especially if there are hard-hitting melee mobs. You need to be sure you are turned in a way that you are able to block attacks (you'll see why soon).

The greatest mitigation tool you have against melee is the armor, but block sure is nice. You'll want to stack a certain amount of block rating and block value for AoE pulls. Most melee doesn't do enough damage to overrun your block value, so it is essentially the same as avoidance, but with 1 huge benefit. Damage Shield. 20% of your SBV automatically to the mob. This doesn't cost rage or a global cooldown and occurs every time you block. Aside from Thunder Clap and Shockwave, this is your only effective AoE threat generator.
Warriors are actually pretty solid when it comes to taking spell damage despite our low health pools. With talents, we can ignore 16% of incoming spell damage. Spell Reflection also lends a hand every 10 seconds for both damage mitigation and threat.

As mentioned above, Damage Shield really is a great threat generator against melee, but useless against casters. Warriors are slightly inferior when it comes to AoE tanking casters (Druids have a no cooldown AoE while Paladins and DKs have an AoEoT (AoE over time)). Shockwave and Thunderclap are on 20 and 8 second CDs, respectively. If we've blown those cooldowns and are still seeing "Losing Threat" we don't have a lot of tools to ensure continued aggro on multiple mobs.
A small amount of threat (around 70) can be generated by applying Battle Shout or Commanding Shout. Reapplying does not generate additional threat, but switching between shouts does. Also, if you have yet to use Demoralizing Shout, that does a small amount as well (around 40).

Some additional tips and tactics:
- Use Thunder Clap before Shockwave because the damage from TC can break the stun. A mob doing no damage is much less of a threat.
- Make sure Vigilance is applied to your best AoE. Alternatively, you can put it on your other tank to give your self a no-cooldown Taunt (especially good for Gothik in Naxx25).
- Rogues and Hunters are your friends. If their MD/ToT is on cooldown, wait a few seconds to pull caster groups.
- Grand Widow Faerlina's disciples that cast the shadowbolts do a funny thing when first pulled. They cast at EXACTLY the same time. This means, you need to save enough rage for those groups to run in and pop Spell Reflect. Once you see most of the group casting put it up, you'll see a whole lot of "Reflect" pop up. It's especially great because they don't even have to be targeting you (assuming you're adequately talented).

If you have tips and tricks that you use, let it be known in the comments.

Slammed!

If you've been waiting for a new and insightful post from me, here it is!

Never, EVER use Slam while tanking. You can't dodge, block, or parry while casting. So don't do it.

That's really a joke, I'm sure you all know not to even try that. What I mean by "Slammed!" is that I'm slammed at work, so posting has been hard to do.

I've been trying to sit down and write a post about effective usage of abilities when AoE tanking (along with some sweet trinkets you can use if you have them). I really am excited about this post, so I don't want to rush it. Look for is this weekend!

Using "Off" Off-tanks on Gluth

If you've ever had a problem on Gluth with one of the tanks going down and having no emergency plan for clearing the healing debuff, here is one for you. If you have yet to down Gluth, this is something that might help you get that first kill (though tanks are rarely the reason this fight goes south).

Gluth has a pretty weak melee attack, but the stacking debuff (10% per stack applied every 10 sec) makes it hard to heal through after 3 or 4 stacks. Mortal Wound lasts for 15 seconds. If you lose your offtank, you need to get any other tank class ready to taunt on your signal. You want to get your new OT to taunt when you have less than 10 seconds on your debuff. As soon as your debuff runs out, taunt Gluth back so the OT doesn't take more than 1 stack.

Warrior: defensive stance, shield equipped, and ready to taunt and use Shield Block. Shield Block lasts for 10 seconds and will block every attack, which will really help reduce the incoming damage.

Paladin: shield equipped, Righteous Fury, ready to taunt and use Divine Shield. Divine Shield will make him immune to damage for 12 sec but shouldn't cause him to lose aggro on Gluth.

Druid: Dire Bear form, ready to taunt and use Barkskin. Barkskin lasts for 12 sec and will reduce all incoming damage by 20%. Combine that with the high armor in bear form, even Boomkin or Tree Druids should be able to fill this role.

Death Knight: Frost Presence, tanking weapon(s) if they have them, ready to taunt and use Icebound Fortitude. Icebound Fortitude reduces damage taken by 20% for 12 seconds with additional damage reduction based on defense.

All these OT damage reduction abilities have a 1 minute cooldown except for Divine Shield (5 min). That means that you should be trying to take 5 stacks of Mortal Wound before having the OT taunt again. You should be saving your damage reduction abilities for use after 3 or 4 stacks so there is less healing that needs to be done.

10-man Shields

After getting my new shield from Heroic CoS (and having a choice as to what shield to use), I got to thinking about all the epic shields available to me as a 10-man tank.

Pre-raid, you have three choices:
Titansteel Shield Wall (Blacksmithing Crafted)
Royal Crest of Lordaeron (Mal'ganis - Heroic Culling of Stratholme)
Crygil's Discarded Plate Panel (35 Emblems of Heroism)

Any of these three should be pretty easy to obtain depending on your play style (farming for mats/gold, farming for drops, farming for emblems).

In 10-man raids, you have two choices:
The Skull of Ruin (Grobbulus)
Barricade of Eternity (Malygos)

Each of the five epic shields has a slot to fill. For me, the Titansteel Shield Wall was a huge help in getting uncrittable (curse you, Loken!). While this is a very solid shield for raiding, I could really use the itemization points other places than defense. I knew I needed either the Royal Crest or Crygil's Panel. The two are virtually identical: +15def (Crest) vs. +33 dodge (Panel). I wasn't convinced that 35 Emblems was worth the price of not farming a fun and easy heroic. Whether you pick the Crest or the Panel, or let fate decide, both are a good threat upgrade over the Shield Wall. I can't see any reason to go back to the Shield Wall if you get your hands on the Crest or the Panel.

From there, The Skull of Ruin comes into play as a mitigation and Shield Slam item. Providing more block rating than any of the other four, it is good both for a consistent reduction in damage intake as well as AoE threat from a Shield Spike if you choose to use one. This shield also sports more SBV than any other shield in the game (with Titanium Plating and Meta, you're looking at 424 after modifiers). Unless you are really hurting for hit rating, use this shield for trash.

The Barricade of Eternity (for those of you downing Malygos) is the clear winner for all boss fights. This has the most Effective Health and avoidance (technically, it has .02 less than the Panel, but more block rating). It also has a good chunk of expertise for parry and dodge reduction as well as additional threat.

Below, I've compared each of the 5 against each other (blanks mean stats are equal).
Titansteel (T), Royal Crest (C), Crygil's Panel (P), Skull of Ruin (S), Barricade of Eternity (B).

	Armor	SBV	Str	Sta	Def	Ddg	Pry	Blk	Hit	Exp
TvC			+2C	+6C	+15T				+25C
TvP			+2P	+6P	+30T	+33P			+25P
TvS		+38S	+15S	+6S	+37T			+25S
TvB	+192B	+5B	+7B	+15B	+23T		+32B			+28B
CvP					+15C	+33P
CvS		+38S	+13S		+14C			+25S	+25C
CvB	+192B	+5B	+5B	+9B	+8C		+32B		+25C	+28B
PvS		+38S	+13S		+7P	+33P		+25S	+25P
PvB	+192B	+5B	+5B	+9B	+7B	+33P	+32B		+25P	+28B
SvB	+192B	+33S	+7S	+9B	+14B		+32B	+25S		+28B

Sporting the Crest

After quite a few Heroic Stratholme runs, I finally picked up one of the best looking pieces of gear in the game.

Royal Crest of Lordaeron
Binds when picked up
Off Hand Shield
7530 Armor
211 Block
+38 Strength
+75 Stamina
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 80
Equip: Increases defense rating by 49 (9.96 @ L80).
Equip: Improves hit rating by 25 (0.76% @ L80).

I had to commemorate the occasion by taking a new version of my favorite screenshot (which is my profile picture).

Who To Blame

It has been said many times and many places that blame for deaths while raiding (and sometimes the associated wipe) can be assigned thusly:

- If a tank dies, it's the healer's fault.
- If a healer dies, it's the tank's fault.
- If DPS dies, it's their own fault.

While this is normally a good rule to follow, there are of course exceptions.

- If a tank dies and has cooldowns available, it's the tank's fault
- If a healer dies from failure to self-heal (esp when standing in AoE), it's their fault
- If DPS dies because the tank is not putting out enough threat, it's still their fault

My Favorite Macros

#showtoolip [help] Intervene; Charge
/startattack
/cast [harm] Charge; [help] Intervene
/cast [harm] Heroic Strike
/cast [harm] Revenge

This is my favorite macro by far. What this does is Charge an enemy target or Intervene a friendly one. Additionally, if the target is an enemy, it will queue a Heroic Strike and use Revenge if it's available. The reason this combo works well together is because I have the Glyph of Revenge, that makes my next Heroic Strike free if I land a hit with Revenge.

#showtooltip Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
/use Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
/use Coren's Lucky Coin
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam

My next favorite is a trifecta. It's used for super mitigation, super AoE threat, and super SS damage. Since the Autoblocker and the Coin share a cooldown (the PTR before Brewfest did not link the CD), the macro will use whichever is not on cooldown. Adding Shield Block to this macro will double your SBV after adding the 200 SBV from the Autoblocker or Coin. When I pop this, I normally, have around 2500 SBV (super SS) with 100% chance to block attacks (super mitigation). That also means Critical Blocks for 5000! . Since Damage Shield hits for 20% of your SBV, you also double that damage (super AoE threat).

/cast [equipped:Bows/Guns/Crossbows] Shoot; [equipped:Thrown] Throw

This is a simple macro that lets me use the same toolbar spot no matter what type of ranged weapon I am using.

#showtooltip
/use 13

This macro is as simple as it looks. It uses the item in slot 13 of your equipped items. It happens to be your top trinket slot. The bottom is 14. This is another that allows me to use the same toolbar slot regardless of which trinkets I have equipped. I use this (and one for 14) on all my toons.

As an aside, the most fun macro I have is actually on Siggles, my Enhancement Shaman. It takes my 2.8 and 1.6 speed weapons and puts them well under 1 second attack speed (I think my 2.8 goes to about 0.8). My gloves are "enchanted" with Hyperspeed Accelerators, which, on use, give me 340 haste for 10 sec every minute.

/use Westrift Handcovers
/use Haste Potion
/cast Bloodlust

Welcome to the Blog

Welcome to 10-Man Tank! Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog.

First, a little about myself. I'm a 26-year old husband, father of 2 boys, guild leader and main tank for Knights of the Serpent (KOTS).

My main, Signu, is a protection warrior who I started in the summer of 2005. Signu got to 60 and began raid tanking as an offtank for a guild that had just started working on Molten Core. I ended up offtanking through Garr before the guild fell apart. When Zul'Gurub was released, I started tanking again. I was again an off-tank, but sometimes took over main tank duty when needed. I got experience tanking all the bosses except Hakkar. The opening of the Gates of Ahn'Quiraj lead me to 20-man AQ, where I tanked through Moam.

Burning Crusade is where my tanking career really started. I had been leveling quickly with a core group of friends and tanking all the 5-man instances (and heroics). After gearing up at 70, some of oy guildmates and I were invited to fill a few spots in a Karazhan raid. I ran a few Karas as OT, spending a little bit of time in the Servant's Quarters, and a lot of time of Attumen. Eventually, KOTS did a full guild run. That began our quick run through the ranks of raiding guilds on Terenas. Before BC was out, I had main tanked every encounter up to Reliquary of Souls. The only boss prior to RoS that we didn't kill was Kael'Thas. As Lich King neared, KOTS split. The people who stayed did so because they loved the guild as it was.

When Lich King dropped, there was no rush to 80. There was no mandate to start raiding on a certain date. KOTS was a casual guild again. As 2008 came to a close, we had enough at 80 to start into Naxxramas. The date was set: 1/2/09 would be the start of a new raiding era for KOTS. Every raid would be productive, but fun. Raids would be a time for ten 80s to smash things and have a great time. So far, we've cleared Naxx, 0d-Sarth, and attempted 1d-Sarth.

My side project is an Enhancement Shaman, Siggles, who I try to pimp out as much as I can. He's 72 right now, and sports the new engineering goggles that I power-leveled to get.

I hope that wasn't too much to read (or too boring). I'm looking forward to keeping this blog updated with my experiences from 10-man raiding, as well as tips for tanks, gearing, and encounters. Thanks for reading!