Tank Hard!

The season 3 shield wall has been added to PTR.  It’s pretty nice, but will fall into the category of items requiring an 1850 Personal Arena Rating.  Good luck to any Prot warr not willing to respec out to PVP to get a chance to snag this puppy =)

Satrina has done quite a bit of work in testing out the new Devastate changes on PTR. With the latest changes to the way things work, the 2.3 Devastate is looking pretty nice!

Summary
1) The innate threat for Devastate has been increased per Sunder that is on the mob: 119/134/148/162/176 (These numbers should be pretty close - the mage was using unarmed hits for 1-4 at the end to draw aggro. Still could bear some independent testing for verification).

2) While Devastate is applying Sunders (i.e. the first 5 Devastates that land), you gain the 301 threat for the Sunder in addition to the Devastate innate threat. Note that the Sunder is a separate effect; its threat is not part of the Devastate innate threat.

3) Once 5 Sunders are stacked, Devastate will refresh the Sunder stack but does not apply a new Sunder, and as such does not gain the threat for a Sunder. Devastate threat at 5 Sunders is 176 + (1/2 damage + 175) [the damage portion is subject to mitigation]

4) You get the Sunder threat as normal in Battle and Berserk stance if you apply one of the first five Sunders. Once 5 Sunders are on, you will only get 176 + (1/2 damage + 175) [the damage portion is subject to mitigation], multiplied by stance modifier/Salvation/etc.

5) Expose Armour still blocks the Sunder component of Devastate. If there are no Sunders on the mob, and Sunder will be blocked from landing on the mob, the innate threat of Devastate is 109.

6) We also see that there is no difference in innate threat when we apply 4 Sunders and then Devastate and applying 5 Sunders and then Devastate. That tells us that the Sunder for the Devastate being performed counts towards the innate threat. So, we get:
Revised 28 October
- 109 innate for Devastate with no Sunders, and no Sunder landing (per EA test, above)
- 119 innate for Devastate adding the first Sunder
- 134 innate for Devastate adding the second Sunder
- 148 innate for Devastate adding the third Sunder
- 162 innate for Devastate adding the fourth Sunder
- 176 innate for Devastate adding the fifth sunder, and Devastate with five Sunders already in place

It looks like we are in for a nice treat when 2.3 goes live!

Check the full story here!

So we went in for our 4th attempts on Void Reaver last night, and low and behold we dropped him on our first shot. We have gotten close on him several times, but our biggest problem seemed to be just not enough DPS as we would not get him down quick enough before the 10 minute Enrage timer.

The one thing we did differently this time around was head in with two Resto Shaman whose sole responsibility was to chain heal the melee. Other than that we had 2 Holy Paladins, and a Holy Priest to keep up the tanks, with an additional Holy Priest and Resto Druid healing up anyone who sucked at dodge ball.

We had myself, a Feral Druid, another Prot Warrior, and a Prot Paladin for tanks, with all of us fighting for aggro at all times. The fight went really well, and we dropped Void Reaver in short order.

Some suggestions on VR, when you are knocked back and lose aggro, swap in a slower, harder hitting weapon to use to spam Devastate. I used my [The Decapitator]. When I would regain aggro, I would swap back to [King's Defender]. In addition, having a Shaman in your group for Windfury and a Feral Druid for Improved Leader of the Pack can be a boon for this fight.

Make sure you or another warrior is keeping up Thunder Clap, Demoralizing Shout, and Commanding Shout at all times. Hopefully you have another warrior in your group that can Battle Shout as well.

So anyway, after downing Void Reaver, low and behold he drops the Warrior Tier5 Shoulder token, and guess who has a shiny new set of [Destroyer Shoulderguards] =)

The Egotistical Priest had a nice guest blogger the other day, a tank from his guild. He makes an excellent post on tanking and has some good info and links inside. The post borders on a rant, but it is a fun read which rings true through and through.

Tanking, first of all, is knowledge. Simply leveling a tank class to the cap and putting points into some talents that look like they might help doesn?t even begin to cut it. Gestalt said it best; ?A Protection (or Feral) heavy spec indicates one and only one thing about one?s suitability for a Main Tank role: the person in question is familiar enough with the game to find their talent window and allocate points. That is all.?

Egotistical Priest : A World of Warcraft Priest Blog : » Blog Archive » EgoTank - Lern2Tank

Yesterday we went over some of the new items that will be available in Zul’Aman with patch 2.3. Today we’ll talk about drops from the big boys of Zul’Aman, Hexxlord Malacrass and Zul’jin.

Hexxlord Malacrass drops a nice head item, [Battleworn Tuskguard], which in my opinion is on par with the crafted [Helm of the Stalwart Defender], and comes close to the Tier5, [Destroyer Greathelm]. It is much better than [Eternium Greathelm] and [Warbringer Greathelm]. Of course, who cares about helms when you could have this wonderful trinket? [Tiny Voodoo Mask]

Zul’jin brings us a few nice items. We get not only a trinket, and a breastplate, but a nice new tanking axe as well! [Ancient Aqir Artifact] is a very nice trinket. [Chestguard of the Warlord] is a marvelous chest piece, beating out pretty much everything short of Black Temple, Tier6 drops. If this chest were in the game when I was working on blacksmithing, I would have gone with another profession in a heartbeat, as in my opinion it handily beats [Bulwark of Kings]. [Cleaver of the Unforgiving] is a lovely tanking axe, having more DPS, more stamina, and a gem socket over [King's Defender]. Being an orc, with axe specialization racial (albeit getting nerfed in 2.3), I would really like to acquire this beauty.

All in all, the armor drops from Zul’Aman are heavy on Shield Block Value and Rating, which I like. There’s also more blue gem slots, allowing us to gain the socket bonus on more pieces of gear that we only slot [Solid Star of Elune].

There are many items here that should keep you frothing over running Zul’Aman for long to come!