2009 April | Tank Hard!

Soloing Onyxia

April 24, 2009 By Bizzam 5 Comments

With all this new content to explore and explain, would I even think about making a new post about Vanilla WoW content? Well, yes indeed I am!

Today I logged in to do my Argent Crusade, Fishing, Cooking and Jewelcrafting dailies but somehow got sidetracked by an old friend…. Onyxia. I haven’t seen Onyxia in … well, years … so I thought I would pay the old broad a visit.

I had heard whisperings of all sorts of folks soloing Onyxia, so I started to ponder if a prot warrior could solo Onyxia. I knew that some sort of healing would be required, so I started tinkering with builds that included Bloodthirst.

I ended up going with this build. I slapped in a Glyph of Bloodthirst, threw on my old 4 piece epic Illidan Fire Resist gear and headed out to Onyxia’s Lair to give it a whirl. I had about 500 defense, 25k hp, and 200 fire resist.
Well, long story short, about 30ish minutes later, Onyxia lay dead at my feet, and I was clearing bag space for all the phat lewt. In the end, it was was not all that challenging. I never had any close calls, never got below 50% health, and only used enraged regeneration once during the transition from phase 2 to phase 3. Next time around, I’ll likely drop some of the FR gear in favor of more DPS gear to make the fight shorter, assuming I actually ever do go solo Onyxia again!

The hardest part of the encounter was chasing Onyxia around during Phase 2 and meleeing her down. For the most part, other than the intial group of whelps, I just ignored the whelps and let Thunder Clap kill them off when I had accumulated a few.

In the end, it was a bit of fun and an interesting diversion. I will admit, it is a bit saddening to be able to take down a once end game boss with such ease. Such is the way the game goes!

Onyxia Down!

Filed Under: Tanking, Warriors

3.1 Death Knight tanking changes

April 16, 2009 By Deathsmarch Leave a Comment

Ulduar and 3.1 have finally hit, and I know many of you are wondering how this is affecting the tanking abilities of death knights. One really good peice of news is that Unholy Blight and Gargolye have now switched places! This is good news for you non-unholy tanks because now you can have this amazing talent too. Another awesome change is that Blood Boil no longer requires diseases (however does bonus damage to diseased targets). This is great for when your Death and Decay is on cooldown. The biggest and most prominent change for myself is the new glyph. Glyph of Disease now refreshes ALL diseases on you target(s) when you use Pestilience!!!!!! This is a blessing from Blizzard. On the downside most of your tanking cooldowns have been increased by a minute. This is only a minor setback however, because your trinkets will more than compensate for this. The future looks bright for all you Death Knight tanks out there. Keep on being a meatshield and keep those squishies safe! And as always, tank hard or go home!

-Deathsmarch

Filed Under: Tanking

So what are your 3.1 dual spec … specs?!

April 15, 2009 By Bizzam 3 Comments

So 3.1 is finally here and dual specs are all the rage!

To start out with, I took a full survival spec for Ulduar (5/14/52), and also took a UA spec (37/0/34) to try out. The servers were too unstable last night to try out either in a raid setting, but I’ll be looking forward to using both soon enough.

One thing I did do is head outside Orgrimmar to try out the UA spec in PVP. Let’s just say that UA >>>>>> melee. The UA spec made it almost trivial to utterly smash melee’s face into the ground. The absence of the mobility talents really hurt vs. casters. In the end, I didn’t take UA for PVP, I was just tinkering.

Nobody had the Glyph of Last Stand or Glyph of Vigilance as of yet, but I can’t wait to get my hands on them.
So what did you use as your secondary spec?

Filed Under: Raiding, Tanking Tagged With: 3.1, Spec

Death Knights as Tanks

April 7, 2009 By Bizzam 14 Comments

deathknight

I’ll confess.

Lately I’ve had a bit of class envy developing. I’ve watched as a couple of the folks in our guild re-roll Death Knights and gear up along side me as we do our weekly raiding routine. I embraced my new tanking brothers and was happy to have some new blood in the tanking ranks.

But then I saw something else happening. I saw those same DK’s, who started raiding weeks behind me, quickly catch up. When checking who should tank what, I would ask, what’s your armor up to now? Your avoidance? I could see that their hitpoints were quickly matching and then surpassing my own. As well as their armor quickly caught up with, and also passed. And then I see that the avoidance as well? Wait a minute, what’s going on here?

I’ll admit that when DK’s originally came out, I did not give them much of a second glance when it came to tanking. I fully expected DK’s to be OP in the DPS department, but I was not prepared for what they might be capable of in the tanking department too.

Now, as the raid leader, I always strive to put the people who are most suited for the job in the position to ensure our best chance of success. More and more, I am having to cope with my view that in most circumstances DK’s are better equipped to tank those bosses that I was so intimate with. More armor, more avoidance, more health, better DPS, better ability uptime… Why wouldn’t I put those guys as the front man?

I realize that patch 3.1 is bringing DK’s down a bit, but I begin to wonder if I’ll be spending more and more time in my upcoming secondary spec as DPS rather than up front face smashing as a tank.

Filed Under: Death Knights, Raiding, Tanking, Warriors Tagged With: Tanking, Warriors