A Night in Ulduar-10

Last night we got an ad hoc group together to do some mob-whacking in 10-man Ulduar just for fun. We brought a mix of people, including some who had never been in Ulduar before.

Five hours later, General Vezax was dead and we went down to have a look at Yogg-Saron before we called it.

I'm quite surprised about the difference in difficulty between 10-man and 25-man Ulduar. 10-man Ulduar is a walk in the park; The mobs hardly make a dent in your armor, and the bosses have so little health they go down faster than a popsicle in Sahara.

We were running with me as main tank together with a feral druid. That meant we didn't have the imba cooldowns that a death knight tank has, but it didn't become a problem anyway. For Mimiron's Plasma Blasts, we had both tanks tank him in turn to use their individual cooldowns to survive in phase 1.

On General, I used my Divine Protection together with a priest's Guardian Spirit and a paladin's Hand of Sacrifice (since the priest didn't have his Guardian Spirit glyphed) to survive the Surge of Darkness.

Mana was a non-issue in the General fight as well, even though I only have 1 point in Spiritual Attunement. Every time my mana went below 50% I stopped using Consecration, and then my mana started going up again, thus allowing me to start using Consecration again.

It was a fun raid. Very relaxed compared to the 25-man raids. I passed on all the tanking gear that dropped (the off-spec tanks were happy about that), but picked up the Tier helm from Mimiron, so I could get the 2-piece bonus (I have the T8.5 skirt from Freya-25).

If you are wearing Naxx-25 gear, Ulduar-10 is a nice and easy way to learn the encounters before stepping it up to Ulduar-25.

Patch 3.1.2

Patch 3.1.2 should hit live servers this week. Not much of interest in this patch, except the Wintergrasp honor grind nerf (daily quests are changed to weekly quests) and the introduction of Equipment Manager.

It will be interesting to compare Equipment Manager with addons such as Outfitter, ItemRack, and ClosetGnome.

For paladins, there are only two minor changes:

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

The first one eliminates the very annoying situation where all the nicely buffed Blessings of Wisdom are removed as soon as one of the shammies drop their totem. Paladins rejoice! You will no longer have to waste reagents, mana, and time when buffing in a group with shammies who don't pay attention!

When Blizzard changed the mana totems to not stack with BoW, it was like going back a few patches to when Battle Shout removed Blessing of Might.

If I may ask: Why are things like these not caught during testing?

The second change is a down-right PvP nerf. Apparently, paladins were "one-shotting" hunter pets (I don't see that happening when I look at hunter pets' health pools and the damage I do with Exorcism with a loooooong cooldown, but whatever...).

Blizzard is constantly trying to nerf the burst damage of retribution paladins, a class that is designed around burst damage. It's an interesting dilemma.

Yogg-Saron

We spent several hours wiping on Mimiron this week, and this limited our time on Yogg-Saron. Next week, we really need to down that toy robot faster, so we have a chance to learn the Yogg-Saron encounter.

The Yogg-Saron fight is really messy. And we haven't even gotten past phase 2!

For phase 1, we position the raid close to the door. One tank, a healer, and some dps go into the center of the room. The first guardian is picked up by the center tank and killed. The second guardian is picked up by our kiting tank, whose job it is to move adds close to death to the center tank. When additional guardians spawn they are picked up by me, standing between the raid and the center tank group. I keep them on me and away from the healers until the kiting tank takes one of me to be dpsed, kited to the center, and killed.

We wiped several times due to dpsers being too eager to shoot at everything moving, which meant adds were running all over the place, and some even exploding in the raid. With some more practise, this phase will probably be over fast and easy. It is possible to speed it up by running into the clouds to get some more guardians at the same time.

For us, the second phase was chaotic to say the least. We didn't have enough time this week to practise on it, and we had to leave the encounter a bit overwhelmed by everything that was going on.

It really is en epic fight.

Professions for a tank

Professions boost your tanking stats in different ways. There is no mandatory profession for a tank these days, but some are better suited than others.

I am listing the useful ones below, describing what each of them will contribute:

Jewelcrafting
* Up to three prismatic gems, which will give you 41 stamina each. Will also help to satisfy meta gem requirements. Three 41 stamina gems would be 51 stamina more than using three "normal" stamina gems.
* One of the best tanking trinkets out there: Monarch Crab. Stamina and on-use avoidance coupled with two sockets.

Blacksmithing
* Two extra sockets. This could give you 48 stamina, 32 dodge, 32 defense, or whatever combination.

Mining
* 50 stamina.

Enchanting
* Enchanting rings with 24 stamina each.

Leatherworking
* Fur lining on wrists worth 90 stamina. That is 50 more stamina than the normal stamina wrist enchant.

Alchemy
* A very nice stamina and avoidance trinket (Indestructible Alchemist Stone).

Inscription
* Better shoulder enchant (Master's Inscription of the Pinnacle). It's 32 dodge more than the Sons of Hodir one.

Engineering
* Glove enchants (800 armor).

As you can see, Blizzard seem to have balanced the professions so that they give about 50 stamina each. Some of the professions are more versatile than others.
The best combination is probably blacksmithing and jewelcrafting.

Personally I'm running with mining and blacksmithing, but that's just because that is what I have had since I started playing. A tank that could create his own armor, and also farm the mats for it just sounded "right". :)

General down

Yup. General went down.

I did this fight as retri, since tankadins face potential mana issues (especially since I'm running with just 1/2 Spiritual Attunement). We started by using a warrior tank who kited the boss during the Surge of Darkness, but he ended up being killed early in every attempt. So we switched to a death knight tank who just tanked him where he stood and didn't move at all during the fight.

As retri, this fight is extremely simple. I don't have to interrupt the Searing Flames like the other melee classes, and I don't have to worry about mana since Judgement of the Wise is totally imba. I just stood behind the boss and nuked as hard as I could for about 4 minutes, and then the boss was dead.

I know the rest of the raid was running around looking for green puddles to get mana back, and the interrupters had a crucial task of interrupting the Searing Flames. I, on the other hand, just stood there and nuked.

We ran into Yogg-Saron's room to check him out and quickly wiped since people stood in clouds that spawned loads of adds. I was still in retri spec and found myself trying to kill the Guild Master while being mind controlled.

I think the Yogg-Saron fight will take some time to learn.

Keepers down

Yesterday, the little toy robot Mimiron went down, which meant we defeated all the Keepers after two visits this week. I watched the kill face down on the ground after dying to a rocket landing on my head. I claim that the distraction of having to roll over my dead body over and over again was the true reason for him going down.

After the kill, we cleared the remaining bosses (Ignis, Council) before moving on the our next target: General Vezax.

That's one ugly dude.

We had two attempts before we called it.

Afterwards, some of us started a 10-man Ulduar run. We one-shotted Leviathan, XT-002, Kologarn, and Auriaya and went on to Mimiron. We downed him once today... let's try it again!

I left the raid to get some sleep after two attempts, which both reached phase 4. I'm sure the rest of the people stayed a while to wreck havoc to the place.

Tankadin Shield Enchants

There are three available shield enchants, each catering a different flavor.

• Defense - Increses defense rating by 20. Good avoidance enchant.

• Titanium Plating - made by blacksmiths, this increases the block value by 40, and also reduces disarm effects. Good threat and mitigation enchant.

• Major Stamina - old school TBC enchant, this increases stamina by 18. This enchant has not yet seen an upgrade in WotLK. Good enchant for efficient health.

Tanks love avoidance. Tanks love health. Tanks love threat. So how do you choose?

The answer is to enchant your shield so that you strengthen its strengths, not to cover it's weaknesses. Then you keep a couple of shields in your bags, and switch to whatever the current encounter requires.

As an example, in Naxx I ran with the Titanium Plating on my Wall of Terror as a threat/block shield on trash, and with Defense on my Hero's Surrender as an avoidance shield.

In Ulduar, I replaced the enchant on Wall of Terror to Defense and use that shield as a default shield. The reason is that I want the stamina on it as well as the block rating. If I put on Hero's Surrender, I am no longer block capped. I am currently juggling the new Ulduar gear around to stay block capped, and so far, I need this shield.

Last week, Northern Barrier dropped. I passed on it since it's a side grade to Wall of Terror. But if I ever get it, I will probably put the Titanium Plating on it to make a serious threat shield.

Emalon the Storm Watcher

Did the 10-man version of Emalon the Storm Watcher yesterday.

I was the adds tank, which meant I wanted to pull four adds at the same time at the start. This was best solved by me running in first, putting down a consecration under the boss and all adds, and then walk back into my corner while the other tank taunted the boss off me and ran into his corner.

We made sure there was enough distance between the two tanks so that the boss' Lightning Nova didn't hit the adds tank. The tanks should, however, not be too far apart, since this would make the lives of melee dps harder when they have to switch between the boss and the overcharged add.

As soon as an add got overcharged, I targeted it and put a skull on it. All DPS focused on this add and burnt it down as fast as possible. Shortly after the add was killed, it respawned near the boss and needed to be picked up by me.

I accidentally killed a couple of the adds while building threat, and that forced me to pick up more adds than necessary. I'll remember until next time to try to avoid killing any of the adds to make my job easier. Only the overcharged ones should be killed to reduced the number of adds needed to be picked up during the fight.

Sadly, he only dropped PvP gear this time.

Tankadin Weapon Enchants

What enchant to put on your favorite weapon is always a dilemma. If you are a lucky looter, you might have multiple tanking weapons with different enchants in your bag, one for each type of encounter.

Currently I'm running with Potency on my Last Laugh. It's an old school TBC enchant that starts to feel a bit too old school. There was no upgrade to this enchant in WotLK, since they changed the potency enchants to give Attack Power instead of Strength.

I've been looking at the other options available, but cannot find anything that stands out as being exactly what I want.

Threat

• With good enough gear, Accuracy is the best threat enchant, granting you both hit and crit. I like this one, since I'm currently a bit low on hit, and crit is always fun. But it's damn expensive, so I'll save it for my first Ulduar weapon instead.

• Aforementioned Potency is the second best threat enchant around, granting strength which gives you both Attack Power and Block Value, two of the tankadin's primary threat stats. It also grants a minor mitigation due to the Block Value. So threat + mitigation = yummy. It's really sad that it didn't get an upgrade in WotLK.

• A third (and cheaper) option is the Titanium Weapon Chain. It grants hit (useful) and shorter disarm duration (not so useful for a paladin).

Avoidance

• Blade Ward is a new enchant in 3.1. It procs an increased parry rating (avoidance) followed by extra damage when parrying (threat). Sounds good? Maybe. The proc rate and internal cooldown aren't public, and tests are still ongoing. Personally, I dislike enchants that proc instead of having a static value. This enchant can proc at useless times (like when hitting XT-002's heart or Kologarn's arm) and thus wasting the internal cooldown. And what if it doesn't proc when you REALLY need it? I'm waiting for the test results to see if this is worth it.

• Exceptional Agility is another avoidance option. It grants agility (d'oh) which gives you dodge (avoidance), armor (mitigation), and crit (threat). What's there not to like? Well, I just like strength better than agility...
  

• Mongoose. Yet another old school enchant. Grants loads of agility and some attack speed "occasionally". Increased attack speed doesn't matter much for a tankadin, and I have already stated my dislike for proccing enchants. What good is 120 agility if you don't get it when you need or want it? Leave this enchant to the rogues.
  

Other

• Blood Draining is a new enchant in 3.1. The enchant stacks Blood Reserve up to five times when striking an enemy or inflicting damage with bleed attacks. When you reach 35% of your health, it heals you for some amount depending on the number of stacks. This is a weird enchant. You only have use for it when you are close to death, which means when your healers are slacking. It kicks in at 35%, which is a really bad time for a tankadin, since that's when our Ardent Defender kicks in. If you are really unlucky, this enchant can put you just above the 35% marker and thus make you take full hits when Ardent Defender should have lowered the incoming damage instead. The enchant also works on bleed effects, which paladins do not have. It's obviously not meant for tankadins, but for druids and warriors.

Conclusion
I only see three viable options: Potency, Accuracy, and Exceptional Agility. At this point, I'm sticking with Potency a while longer.

Thorim loses a 1v25 Arena game

Yet again, my guild downed a new boss when I wasn't around. Last night they defeated Thorim after several nights of wipes on him. I'm gonna need to get the details of what was done differently this time around (except for me not being there...) to analyze how to tweak it even more for next week.

Mimiron is up next, but we will save that fight for next week.