- The leveling order is Howling Fjord / Borean Tundra - Dragonblight - Grizzly Hills - Zul’Drak - Sholazar Basin - Storm Peaks - Icecrown. As a rule of thumb, try to do as many quests as possible in a given region before proceeding to the next.

- The instance order is Utgarde Keep - The Nexus - Azjol-Nerub - Ahn Kahet (The Old Kingdom) - Drak’Tharon Keep - Violet Hold - Gun’Drak - Halls of Stone. The remaining four instances (Oculus, Halls of Lightning, Culling of Stratholme, Utgarde Pinnacle) are level 80 instances.
Utgarde, Azjol-Nerub, Ahn Kahet, Violet Hold and Halls of Stone do not require prequesting. Nexus and Gun’Drak require partial prequesting so that you can get all the quests out of it (for Nexus, just do all the quests on Coldarra if you’re interested. For Gun’Drak, I don’t know, I didn’t do the quest myself). As far as Drak’Tharon is concerned.. I don’t remember. I know that I did at least one quest inside that was the result of a LONG chain of quests (offered by some troll, Drakuru I believe, who is in a cage in a camp formed by the same people involved in the Zul’Aman timed runs (the prisoners) as well as Budd (who has become a quite interesting NPC. Remember when you do the quest that involves taking him for a stroll that you have to activate your pet bar, in case it doesn’t activate by itself). I don’t remember exactly where the camp was, but you’re definitely going to get there while you’re questing in Grizzly Hills.

- Zul’Drak contains an arena which can be done at level 75. Get the prequest in the sewers of Dalaran, get his quest, get a 5 man group together, and do it. It gives a HUGE EP boost, just like the Nagrand arena back then. The bosses don’t hit hard, with the final one (the guy that comes charging in with his rhino), be sure to tank him with your back against the wall while he’s mounted. As soon as he dismounts, someone who is not the tank or the healer needs to mount the rhino (yes, you can hijack his mount) and bash him with it.

- Probably a very obvious hint, but as soon as you turn 77, immediately grab Cold Weather flying, either in Sholazar Basin (Pilot *I forgot his name* in a camp a ways east of Nesingwary’s camp), or in Dalaran, near the flight master. It’s 1000 gold, but it’s definitely worth it. Most quests in Storm Peaks after a while cannot be done without a flying mount. Same goes for Icecrown. Sholazar can be done entirely on land, but it’s definitely handy to have an (epic) flying mount on hand.

- Remember that most of Dalaran as well as Wintergrasp are no-flying zones. If you’re one of those people that like to turn on autowalk and go AFK while travelling from one location to the other, either plan your routes so you don’t fly over those two locations, or consider using the flight paths.

- Speaking of Dalaran, you can enter the city via a crystal just below the city. Look for a dome (a shield you might say) slight west of the central point of the city. Click on the crystal, and up you go! Another way to get there is to talk to some archmage in Wintergarde (eastern Dragonblight) as soon as you’re… 74, I believe. He will teleport you *directly* to Dalaran, where you can then proceed to assign your hearthstone to. Dalaran is a beautiful city (I never get tired of the soundtrack). You’ll know what I mean the first time you fly off of the flight platform and turn around.

- A few more notes about Dalaran. If you went very early and you don’t have any flight connections, or you’re just extremely cheap like I am sometimes, you can exit the city by entering the building on the other side of the road of the building that leads to the flight platform. Click the crystal inside and you’re back down in Crystalsong Forest. There are profession teachers scattered throughout the city. Remember also that there are two banks. And, for future reference, know that you do not turn in your emblems at a single location as you did in BC; rather, you go to the weapons store, the cloth armor store, etc etc, and the person (or one of the people) inside will offer those items for sale.

- As soon as you get to the point where you can quest in Storm Peaks (level 77-78, 78 is better, 77 if you got tired of Zul’Drak way early like I did and went to Sholazar too early), do *everything*, every single quest. This is crucial, because the main quest in Storm Peaks eventually opens up the Sons of Hodir fraction. I cannot emphasize how important this faction is: they are your source for your shoulder enchants, just like turning in holy dust (or whatever that was, what you got in exchange for fel armaments from the aldor) was in BC. It’s a LONG questline, but it also opens up two quests for Halls of Lightning in the end, which is very good.

- When you start questing in Storm Peaks, don’t be surprised when you die. You’ll be at the graveyard mounting a gryphon. This I believe has been included to allow you to retrieve your corpse from certain completely unreachable locations. The same happens inside Icecrown.

- Daily quests: do them. From the beginning on. You *need* that reputation. Wyrmrest Accord offers a very easy quest as soon as you start questing in their temple (in central Dragonblight). It involves mounting on a dragon and going around shooting down other dragons. Not only is a nice break from the endless mob killing, it allows you to build up reputation, which allows you to get some pretty nice reputation rewards. Wyrmrest in particular offers some nice plate for warriors (can’t remember exactly what, I think it was a pair of boots).
If you’re a fisherman (or fisherwoman), Kalu’Ak offers a very easy quest in their village in southern Dragonblight. You run around and gather some wolvar offspring. You can either kill the Den Mothers, or just run into the camp, pick them up, and then run away and laugh at their pitiful damage (that is, if you’re still specced as prot and wearing your tanking gear!)
The aforementioned Sons of Hodir offer a few daily quests, which are absolutely vital, since questing alone will get you somewhere between friendly and honored, whereas your goal is to eventually become exalted. As soon as you finish their quest line, start doing those daily quests… well, daily! You need that reputation because you need that shoulder enchant. The sooner you start doing them, the better off you’ll be, because eventually (as soon as everyone learns about it) those quest areas will be absolutely overfarmed, you only have about three quests that you can do and they are your only source for getting to exalted!
A few Knights of the Ebon Blade daily quests open up eventually in northern Icecrown. They are quite fun quests (one of them involves hijacking a harpoon gun and shooting down dragions that fly in front of you); this faction however did not interest me as much as the others.
I haven’t quested much for the Argent Crusade (they’re up in southeastern Icecrown). I might give an update sometime in the future when I take a break from the endless instance rushing that is going to commence… well, as soon as the servers are back up (we have maintenance right now). Argent Crusade is another incredibly important faction because at revered they offer the head enchant (just like the CoT guys offered it in BC).

- Tabard. You can buy a tabard from four different factions (Kirin Tor, Wyrmrest, Ebon Blade, Argent Crusade) from their respective quartermasters. The effect (increases your standing with that faction) only works in level 80 instances, however it does *not* require *you* to be 80. Feel free to tank through Halls of Lightning or Utgarde Pinnacle while you’re 78-79; if your gear is decent (or was great pre-WotLK), it won’t be a problem.
The instances that allow this are: Halls of Lightning, Utgarde Pinnacle, The Oculus, The Culling of Stratholme. I’m guessing that heroics will work similarly, however I have not entered one as of yet (I think it may be better for me to become crit immune before trying to tackle them, 3,20% crit reduction is not quite enough IMHO).

- As soon as you can start taking daily non-heroic instance quests, do them. The reward is one of four commendations of some sort (one for each of the four factions listed above under the tabard section), which you can turn in for reputation for that respective faction. Reputation grinding is very important in WotLK, and I’m glad Blizzard did not make it as monotonous as it was early on, because, now that you can actually choose which reputation that instance gives you based on the tabard you’re wearing, it now goes hand in hand with the arduous quest for better gear. You’re no longer limited to doing Auchindon instances for pushing up your Lower City reputation, for example.

Drak’Tharon Keep

Trollgore - Nothing tanky
Novos the Summoner - Summoner’s Stone Gavel is debatably useful for a tank. The hit rating is, of course, rather nice. However with no other stats (Stamina in particular) and a slow 2.3 speed, you might be better served letting this fall to someone else who can make better use of it.
King Dred - Can’t WAIT for this boss fight. Gotta love Devilsaurs. Bear types, keep a sharp eye out for Scabrous-Hide Helm, a very nice Head piece for those of the Feral persuasion.
The Prophet Tharon’ja - All lore associated with them aside (for those who don’t know, Muradin Bronzebeard was a main character in the Alliance campaign of WCIII, and is part of the infamous Bronzebeard clan of Dwarves, currently ruling Ironforge, but I digress…) Muradin’s Lost Greaves are definitely on my wish list.

The Violet Hold

(There are only ever three bosses in this instance on any given run. The first 2 are randomly selected from the 6 listed below. The last is always Cyanigosa)
Erekem - Screeching Cape should fit nicely on any tank’s back, regardless of class.
Moragg - Shoulderplates of the Beholder will doubtlessly cause Moragg to be a hopeful spawn for any party tanked by a Warrior, Death Knight or Paladin.
Ichiron - In addition to being kinda creepy lookin, this Revenant boss also drops Handguards of Rapid Pursuit, a very nice Hands piece for Ferals.
Xevozz - Has Riot Shield and hopefully the same death animation as all the BC Space Mummies as well! Do yourself a favor and actually check the link so you can see a screenie of this shield. Prior to appearing in WotLK, the Riot Shield seperated East and West Berlin for a few years.
Lavanthor - Nothing of tanking interest here on normal mode. Great trinket on heroic though.
Zuramat the Obliterator - Man, if Moragg and Zuramat spawned on the same run, I’d be one happy dude. Hooray for Void Sentry Legplates.
Cyanigosa - Plate Claws of the Dragon COULD be yours if you complete the entire run. This sounds like a very fun instance and certainly has the most tank drops out of any of the instances I’ve looked at so far. And, with the random boss generator, I’m sure it will get run OFTEN. There’s an achievement for downing all 6 of the random bosses too, for all you Obsessive Completionist achievement fiends out there.

Gundrak

Slad’ran - No tank drops… fight sounds entertaining though!
Moorabi - Forlorn Breastplate of War isn’t bad.. looks a little more Fury than Prot, but if it’s going to be DE’ed or Vendored, better off in your hands.
Drakkari Colossus - Shoulderguards of the Ice Troll look pretty awesome, Bears.
Gal’darah - Gal’darah’s Signet is good Finger-slot news for all tanks.
There is also a Heroic-Mode only boss in this dungeon named Eck the Ferocious.. looks like a big, angry Murloc. Enjoy that.

SO there you have it, gang. We’ve held hands through all the instances up to Ulduar’s Halls of Stone & Halls of Lightning (79-80) at which point you should be looking for drops to get you over the Heroic Hump and into Naxxramas itself. Good luck up there, and may blue tanking drops fall plentifully for you!

This listing is MOST helpful to Prot Warriors (Fury & Arms might find some of the pieces useful), Feral Druids, and Death Knights. Some Tankadins will just want to gear up in Warrior plate anyway, but for those who prefer some INT and Spellpower mixed in, you’ll be pleased to know that while I haven’t listed them here, there are a plethora of VERY nice Plate Caster drops along the way. They may be more intended for Healadin use, but they’re still very very good and from what I understand of Paladins, mixing in some Int and Spellpower goes a long way for you guys. I’m also leaving off quest rewards because they may not be the same depending on what Faction you prefer to play as, and honestly, you should be able to tell if a quest reward is meant for a tank or not. So, with that said… Mark your maps and get to lookin!

(Note: This is all based on information available from www.wowwiki.com and www.wowhead.com. Some could be incomplete. There could easily be drops that are not yet listed on either site, but it’s a good starting point nonetheless.)

Utgarde Keep

Prince Keleseth - no good tank drops.

Skarvald - Skarvald’s Dragonskin Habergeon will be an early favorite of newly-arrived Feral Druids.

Ingvar the Plunderer - While Death Knight tanks would doubtlessly prefer something with more Parry on it, it’s hard to be picky early on, and the Hit and Strength (which I believe Equals Parry w/ the right talents for DK’s?) bonuses of Ingvar’s Monolithic Cleaver will probably put it high on their Northrend wishlists… not to mention the name.

The Nexus

Grand Magus Telestra - No good tank drops. BOOOO!
Anomalus - Also no good tank drops. DOUBLE BOO!!

Ormorok the Tree-Shaper - Chiseled Stalagmite Pauldrons! Wave your Mantle of the Warchiefs good-bye (if you’re Horde anyway.. if you’re Alliance, well, I don’t know what you wear… aside from silky-soft skin and a great deal of shame.)

Keristrasza - No love.

Azjol-Nerub

Krik’thir the Gatewatcher - Nothing to see here. Move along.

Hadronox - Arachnophobes turn away from the screen… unless you’re a Feral Druid. In which case, kill the spider and loot yourself some Treads of Aspiring Heights.

Anub’arak - One of the most interesting (and downright badass!) characters in WCIII: The Frozen Throne doesn’t disappoint tanks of any flavor with the Signet of Arachnathid Command. It’d be even cooler if it gave you the Crypt Lord Swarm ability, but I guess we’ll all have to settle for just a very nice tanking ring for the early to mid WotLK content.

Lastly (for THIS particular review) we come to Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom

Prince Taldaram - Nada
Elder Nadox - Zilch!
Jedoga Shadowseeker - Oh, Tanky-tanky! Look at Battlechest of the Twilight Cult! For a Shaman, she carries some darn fine plate! And her ring is a good DPS/Soloing piece to boot! Much love from the Twlight’s Hammer straight to us.

That should carry you through about level 75 or so. Now, I didn’t include the PLETHORA of plate gear w/ Int and mp5 that drops (a piece or TWO from each instance!) in these locations. Tankadins will have to decide if it’s better for them or for a Healadin/Shockadin/Whateveradin. Next time we’ll take a look at what’s available in Drak’Tharon Keep, The Violet Hold, and Gundrak. Personally , I can’t wait for Drak’Tharon Keep or Gundrak. ST/ZF on Ice FTW!!

I cleared out the quests in Howling Fjord and then headed over to Borean Tundra. I have been leveling as Fury and have had zero downtime for the most part. I did try out Arms briefly, but after 10 minutes of the spec, I headed back to Orgrimmar to spec back Fury. Without Bloodthirst, the need for eating/bandaging between fights pushed me away.

I have not been to any of the instances as of yet. I have a few quests ready for Utegarde Keep and Nexus which I will hopefully knock out tonight.

So how are things going with you? Are you pushing hard for 80 or taking a more leisurely stroll through Northrend?

To start the fight the raid has to run through a big sewer pipe that does nature damage to everyone as they run through and then everyone takes fall damage as they jump out of the pipe into Gluth’s room.  Most of the raid will be at 60% HP before the fight even begins.  The tank needs to be the first person into the room and he runs the boss all the way to the far side of the room and gets rolling with the first theme of the fight.

The boss applies a Mortal Wound debuff to the tank that lasts for 15 seconds and reduces healing by 10% and stacks up to 10 times.  That right there tells you that you will need two tanks for the fight.  Gluth also does an aoe fear every 20 seconds which means he fears too often for a single tank to break every fear with berserker rage.  Back in the day, Gluth was untauntable but bosses used to deaggro the tank if the tank was feared.  So you would switch tanks by having the MT eat the fear while the OT broke it with berserker rage.  While the MT was feared the Mortal Wound debuff would expire and then the OT would let himself be feared the next time while the MT broke the fear.  It was the ultimate stance dance fight.  But now, Blizzard wants all tanks to be able to tank all fights so you can’t assume the tank is a warrior that can break fears and since bosses don’t deaggro on fears anyway, Blizzard has simply made Gluth tauntable.  It’s a reasonable solution to address the current tanking paradigm, but, in my opinion, it makes for a much less interesting, less elegant way to tank the fight.  Gluth also has a frenzy/enrage that the hunters need to Tranquilizing Shot.

The second part of the fight is the hard part of the fight and it is going on in the back of the room, totally independent of the tank and boss.  There are 3 grates on the floor in the back of the room where zombies spawn constantly throughout the fight.  The zombies add a debuff every time the melee their target that increases damage taken by 100 and it stacks up to 99 times.  Since there are a ton of zombies, that debuff would quickly stack up and overwhelm a tank if you tried to tank them.  That means they must be kited.  There are a lot of different strategies for which class can/should do the kiting, but, in my experience, a frost mage is usually the best.  The mage needs to pick up the zombies as they spawn and keep them slowed with cone of cold, blizzard and frost novas (frost nova can be dangerous if you do it in the wrong place and snare a bunch of zombies next to a squishy).  Hunters should be dropping frost traps and shaman should be dropping earthbind totems to help the mage.  The zombies have a ton of HP which makes killing them a poor option, but since they aren’t going to be taking any damage, all the mage has to do is outpace healing agro in order to keep the kite going.

It is crucial that the kiting take place in the back of the room, as far as possible from the boss because if the zombies get anywhere near the boss, Gluth will turn and eat the zombie and every time he eats a zombie he heals himself for 5% of his HP.  The fight has an enrage timer so if the kiting is sloppy and the boss heals too many times, you won’t kill him before the enrage.

Those are the two major themes of the fight, but there is one more mechanic that brings those two themes together.  Every 105 seconds the boss uses an ability called Decimate which reduces the health of everyone in the room to 10% INCLUDING the zombies.  Since Gluth just took 90% of the HP off of the zombies, they will all aggro to him and that means there is zero raid wide damage after the Decimate which means that all the healers should land a heal on the tanks to get them topped off.  It may help to have a rotation for Nature’s Swiftness heals.  Only after the tanks are topped off and stable do the healers need to start getting the rest of the raid topped off.  When the Decimate happens, all of the dpsers need to switch to the zombies as they will all be heading toward Gluth and they will all be immune to snares.  They will all be at 10% health which is still kind of a lot but if your dps switches quickly and hits hard, you will easily kill them all before they can heal the boss.

Once the zombies are cleaned up after the Decimate, the mages go back to kiting and everyone switches back to dpsing the boss.  And you keep cycling through the phases until the big doggy is dead… or udead… again… whatever.

Max rank Demo Roar gives a reduction of 408 AP

Max rank Curse of Weakness gives a reduction of 478 AP

 All of those spells have talents to increase their effect.

With max talents

Demo Shout – 574

Demo Roar – 571

Curse of Weakness – 573

 Max rank Curse of Recklessness gives an AP increase of 135.  With Frailty, CoR gives no additional AP bonus.  If you have a warlock in your raid that does not have frailty and is putting up CoR, you need 4/5 imp demo shout to cancel the additional 135 AP.

 If that doesn’t seem confusing enough, boss AP acts funny.  The damage output of a boss seems to scale much higher with AP than does an average player but the amount of AP a boss has is relatively low.  The reason that 2/5 was accepted as the right amount of Imp Demo at 70 was because bosses were found to only have about 350 AP and 2/5 Imp Demo gave a reduction of 348 AP.  This was found by testing boss damage output with different ranks of Imp Demo.  The average damage output didn’t decrease at all past 2/5 which implied that the boss didn’t have any more AP to take away.  Early in the expansion, Curse of Recklessness wasn’t often utilized in raids because people didn’t see the power of armor penetration and because there weren’t any tightly tuned dps races.  If bosses had 350 AP before and CoR added another 135, you now had to reduce 485 AP.  A fully talented Improved Curse of Weakness gave the same reduction as a fully talented Imp Demo – 420 AP – but it was rare to have an affliction warlock in a raid at the end of the expansion which is why you started to see warriors with 5/5 imp demo.

 I started this post off with the different AP reductions, and that’s great to know, but the real question is, how much AP do bosses have now?  I haven’t seen any testing (with the x-pac only out for a week, that’s not too surprising) but hopefully someone with a mind for statistics gets around to it in the near future.  In the mean time, I won’t be putting any points into Imp Demo.  It’s just not worth it for 5-mans where the damage output is rarely enough to be a concern.

 I think the best helm out there is Arcane-Shielded Helm which drops from Grand Magus Telestra in heroic The Nexus.  The second best option is Helm of the Ley Guardian which drops from Ley Guardian Eregos in The Oculus.  Ley Guardian is a really good helm and it is probably better if you are struggling to be crit immune because it has nearly twice as much defense, but its big downfall is the lack of a meta socket.

 Chained Military Gorget is the best neck piece and it is costs 25 badges of heroism.  There are a few drops from Naxx10 that are sidegrades from the gorget (Medallion of the Disgraced and Amulet of Autopsy), but there isn’t a real upgrade until Heritage and Boundless Ambition in naxx25.  I also like Burning Skull Pendant which is a BoE item that drops from trash in heroic Gun’drak if for some reason you can’t spare the badges for the Gorget.

There are a lot of options for shoulders but I think Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons (General Bjarngrim in heroic Halls of Lightning) are the winner.  If you have enough defense and want a more threat oriented piece, then I think Pauldrons of the Lightning Revenant (Ionar in Halls of Lightning) are a good option.

 I think Cloak of the Enemy (Stoutbeard in heroic The Nexus) is an excellent choice.  Tattered Castle Drape (BoE from trash in Utgarde Keep) is another very strong option, but the hit rating and shield block value cancel each other out in terms of threat generation so you are looking at 11 strength versus 13 defense and I think the defense wins that battle.  But, if you are easily crit immune already, the Tattered Castle Drape will give you a little more bang for your buck.  Cloak of Flowing Command (Salramm the Fleshcrafter in Stratholme) is a decent option but I personally have never been a big fan of cloaks (or rings for that matter) with bonus armor on them.  I haven’t done the math, but I would guess you get more effective health out of the 27 more stamina on the other two cloaks than the 359 more armor on this one.

There are a couple different options for chestpiece depending on what kind of stat distribution you are looking for.  Sun-Emblazoned Chestplate (Sjonnir in heroic Halls of Stone) has a ton of defense as well as a healthy amount of hit and it has a socket.  Ziggurat Imprinted Chestguard (Tharon’ja in heroic Drak’tharon Keep) has a little less defense and no hit, but you pick up a bunch of parry if you are short on avoidance.  Breastplate of Solemn Council is purchasable at revered from Wyrmrest Accord and offers a nice option if you have bad luck with other drops and since expertise is hard to find on tanking gear at this level, this item is especially attractive.  I think the socket on Sun-Emblazoned Chest gives it the edge, but just barely.  Engraved Chestplate of Eck (Eck the Ferocious in heroic Gun’drak) is a dps item, but if you are all set on defense and want an aggressive chest piece, this fits the bill with a lot of strength, a lot of hit, and two sockets.  I personally am probably going to get some use out of Breastplate of Agony’s Aversion because the three sockets make it pretty versatile and the strong itemization make it a viable option.

There aren’t a lot of good options for bracers.  The only good defensive bracers are Bindings of Dark Will (Salramm in heroic Stratholme).  If you want a more aggressive setup, Bands of the Stoneforge (Sjonnir in heroic Halls of Stone) and Golden Limb Bands (Krik’thir in heroic Azjol-Nerub) do a good job.  I think Bindings of Dark Will are better than the T6 bracers, but not by enough to make me want to put in a lot of time to get them.

Horn-Tipped Gauntlets (Gal’darah in heroic Gun’drak) are the best option for gloves out there with a healthy amount of defense and gobs of expertise.  Gauntlets of the Water Revenant (Ichoron in heroic Violet Hold) are a good second choice.  Giant Sized Gauntlets are purchasable at revered from the Frenzyheart Tribe and are good if you are looking for some extra avoidance.  Borderland Fortress Grips (Felmyst in Sunwell Plateau) fall behind a bit, but the 2 sockets make them a reasonable alternative if you’ve got them and are looking to cut down your gear farming.

 There are a few good choices for belts.  If you want a strong defensive item, Ancient Aligned Girdle (Anub’Arak in heroic Azjol-Nerub) is probably for you.  If you want to get a little more aggressive then Skadi’s Iron Belt (Skadi the Ruthless in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle) is a good option and the socket means you get some versatility.  If you want to get really aggressive and you are already crit immune, Flame Bathed Girdle (Keristrasza in heroic The Nexus) is an excellent choice.  Waistguard of Living Iron is available from the badge vendor, but it really is not significantly better than the other options, only spend the 40 badges if you have terrible luck with drops.

Bolstered Legplates (Cyanigosa in heroic Violet Hold) are excellent and the huge amount of defense on this item means you can take liberties in other slots and stay crit immune.  If you want some more avoidance though, Legplates of the Infinite Drakonid (Chrono-Lord Epoch in heroic Stratholme) are a solid choice.  If you want a very aggressive piece, Staggering Legplates (Ingvar in heroic Utgarde Keep) would be pretty good even without any sockets, but the 2 sockets make them excellent.  Special Issue Legplates, purchasable at honored from the Argent Crusade are not as good as the other options, but if you have bad luck with some of the drops, these are pretty solid. 

The boot selection is a little slim.  Sabatons of Draconic Vigor are purchasable at revered from Wyrmrest Accord.  These are probably the best boots out there as they have a lot of defense, more stamina than the other options and some hit rating which is always nice.  Terrace Defense Boots(Trollgore in heroic Drak’tharon) look pretty good and they have a socket which gives them the edge over Slaughterhouse Sabatons (Meathook in normal Stratholme).  There is no option if you want a pair of boots with avoidance stats on them so I will be keeping Onslaught Boots around just in case.

There are a lot of good ring options out there and they are all pretty defensively oriented.  Unsmashable Heavy Band (Ingvar in heroic Utgarde Keep) is the only ring with any aggressive/tps stats on it.  Keystons Great Ring (Tharon’ja in heroic Drak’tharon) is a great ring (c wut i did thur) that no tank should be without.  Band of Torture (Drakos in heroic The Oculus) and Woeful Band (Maiden of Grief in heroic Halls of Stone) are good options as well.  The rings are all similar in terms of stat distribution and none of them is significantly better than the other so just use whichever to you get your hands on first.

 Trinkets are always a funny thing and I think Blizzard often has a hard time itemizing them appropriately, especially for tanks.  Consider that one of the best melee dps trinkets comes from Gruul, the best tanking trinkets come from Karazhan and a heroic, Neltharion’s Tear was a strong performer for much of the expansion and I know several healers that still use Rejuvenating Gem.  There was even a quest reward trinket from the Burning Steppes that played a major role in the Moroes fight at the beginning of the expansion (Luffa, the part about bleeds cast by enemies over 60 was added in later).  That said, there aren’t any trinkets from the level 80 5-mans that appear to be outstanding.  Essence of Gossamer (Hadronok in heroic Azjol-Nerub) has a bunch of stamina, which is always welcome, but the chance on hit effect is pretty lackluster.  Lavanthor’s Talisman (Lavanthor in heroic Violet Hold) looks like an updated version of the Auto-Blocker except slightly worse since the passive effect is block rating instead of block value.  Seal of the Pantheon (Loken in normal Halls of Lightning) looks decent and the defense is great if you are struggling to be crit immune, but I am not particularly impressed by the ‘Use’ effect – its not bad, its just not quite good either.  There aren’t any other trinkets that seem to be designed for tanks that I noticed, but there are two more trinkets that I think could be interesting for threat generation.  Depending on the proc rate and internal cooldown, Vestige of Haldor (King Ymiron in normal Utgarde Pinnacle) might be really good or it might be something that you just use for funsies.  Meteorite Whetstone (King Ymiron in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle) could be the new Dragonspine Trophy which was an excellent threat trinket if you could somehow manage to get one in front of every physical dpser in the raid.  I’ll probably get some use out of my Commendation and my trusty Pocket Watch might even make an appearance occasionally.  Trinkets never really go out of style, you should think long and hard about ever getting rid of one.

Valor Medal of the First War is a waste of badges.  It may seem like a new version of Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch, but its not, it’s a piece of garbage.  The pocket watch was an ‘oh shit’ button because the use effect was very powerful – almost 16% dodge – but it only lasted for a short period of time.  The Valor Medal’s use effect lasts twice as long as the Pocket Watch, but it is only half as effective – 7.5% dodge.  If there is a fight where you need to be able to get 7.5% dodge on demand, save your badges and use the Pocket Watch, which gives just slightly less dodge rating - 300 vs 335.

Shields and weapons on the other hand are pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum from trinkets – 9 times out of 10 the item with a higher ilevel is just plain better.  Red Sword of Courage (King Ymiron in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle) blows the competition out of the water.  The Interrogator (Drakos in heroic The Oculus) is the next best option followed by Eternally Folded Blade (Volkhan in normal Halls of Lightning).  Royal Crest of Lordaeron (Mal’ganis in heroic Strat) is the top shield but if you are horde and can’t bear the thought of carrying around Alliance paraphenalia, Crygil’s Discarded Plate Panel is available for 35 badges of heroism and has almost exactly the same stat distribution.  The next best option is Bulwark of the Noble Protector (Keristrasza in heroic The Nexus).  After those three shields, there is a serious drop in quality.  For a ranged weapon, I like Hardened Vrykul Throwing Axe (General Bjarngrim in normal Halls of Lightning) and Tracker’s Balanced Knives (BoE from trash in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle) but the best option is Stolen Vrykul Harpoon which is a reputation reward from the Frenzyheart Tribe and is purchasable at revered.

Don’t get fooled by pretty purple pixels.  Most of the stuff I am recommending is blue/superior but the ilevel is 200 which means they have the same stat budget as Naxx-10 loot.  Just because something is epic doesn’t necessarily mean it is better.  With that in mind, I didn’t bother to look at any of the craftable gear because it is going to be crazy expensive (especially for the first few months of the expansion) and not significantly better than gear you can get for free if you put a little effort into grinding out heroics.

A helpful shaman can drop totems in the slimes’ path and they will explode on the totem to create a large space for people to run through and a helpful pally can bubble and run straight into the slimes to destroy them, but what is the fun in that?

Its much more fun to tell people that have never been to Naxx before that if they run directly into the slime they will get a buff that really helps with the next boss – just like looking through the window behind Golemagg to see Ragnaros.  But you can really only do that once and then people will be on to you so you have to be more creative if you are going to get your guild mates killed.  If you stealth or shadowmeld near the slimes, they will stop and ‘look’ at you which screws with the timing.  Dropping a repair bot in the path of the slimes is also a crowd favorite.  But nothing was better than when snowballs did a knockback when you threw them at friendly targets… the carnage was epic.

So there you go, everything you need to know about Frogger.  I am sure some of you will use this information for good and will make sure a bubbled pally clears the path or a shaman drops totems.  And I am sure some will use the information for evil.  I personally m going to try to kill as many of my guild mates as possible.  That’s just how I roll.

 Every 15 seconds he drops a poison cloud where he is standing that deals a bunch of nature damage and persists for 75 seconds.  The tank needs to walk the boss around the room so that the melee can dps without standing in a poison cloud.  But the tank has to minimize movement or else the long duration of the poison cloud will mean that there is no safe place to stand in the room.

 Grobbulus has a frontal cone attack called Slime Spray that deals a lot of nature damage.  Anyone hit by the spray summon an add called Fallout Slime which does aoe damage and should be picked up by an offtank.  If all the ranged/healers are in the center of the room and the tank is walking the boss around the outside of the room and melee is all behind the boss, then the MT is the only person who will get hit with Slime Spray which means there shouldn’t be too many Fallout Slimes to worry about.  A few ranged can kill the Fallout Slimes relatively quickly when they spawn.

 The boss has another ability called Mutating Injection.  Every 20 seconds or so he will cast this on a random person in the raid and it adds a debuff (and possibly a DoT?) that lasts for 10 seconds.  At the end of those 10 seconds the person explodes and does a whole bunch of damage to everyone around them and they drop a poison cloud where they are standing.  The debuff is cleansable and that is where groups might run into trouble.  When the debuff is cleansed, the person doesn’t explode, but they will drop a poison cloud on the spot they are standing.  Likewise if a mage tried to Iceblock off the debuff or a pally tries to bubble it off.  There needs to be 1 person responsible for cleansing and nobody else should even think about cleansing.  When someone gets the debuff, they need to run to an area where there is already a poison cloud on the ground and only then will they get cleansed.  By doing that, the poison cloud that drops when the person gets cleansed is in a spot where there is already poison on the ground so you don’t lose any free space.

 The fight is really about managing space.  If the tank is moving the boss too far between poison clouds and you have a few cleanses in bad places, the whole room will be full of poison clouds and the raid wide damage will go through the roof and you will probably wipe.

 There is only one mechanic in the fight and it is called Hateful Strike.  It is a melee attack that does a ton of damage and it targets the person in melee range with the most health and the boss uses it roughly every 1.6 seconds.  You need to have at least two tanks for the fight, one boss and one Hateful Strike tank.  The healers basically just spam max rank heals non-stop on the tanks, no real complexity to it.

 The most important thing in the fight is for the Hateful Strike tank (or tanks) to be topped off ASAP after getting hit.  With Hateful Strikes coming as often as they do, if the Hateful tank doesn’t get topped off immediately, it is very possible for someone else in melee range to have more HP and therefore be a target for the Hateful Strike.  If someone that isn’t a tank gets hit with a Hateful, it’s a one-shot.

One thing you can do to protect melee is to have them step into the green slime.  The slime will reduce their HP by 50% and since there is no raid wide damage, the healers can ignore them.  If the melee are getting heals from Improved Leader of the Pack or Vampiric Embrace, they can jump back into the slime occasionally to keep their health low.

While using the slime like that is a nice little trick, if it is really necessary, then you have other problems that you need to deal with – i.e. your Hateful Strike tank is not being topped off fast enough.

 It’s basically a tank and spank fight.  Assuming you have the gear for it, once your healers get into a rhythm, it should be free loot.