I went home for lunch today, intending to fish and eat a sammich while catching up on ESPN. However, as soon as I got settled in, I knew I was in for a treat. An old former guildie of mine messages me saying "Hey, wanna come tank Sarth+3d for me?" I was like "Sure!". I have to say that fight is a lot of fun as the only tank. Managing CD's while dodging flame waves, tanking Sarth and his three pals, keeping whelps and fire elems off dps/healers, and managing to not get yourself killed in the meantime. It's a full deck of responsibilities that lands firmly on the shoulders of the tank. I'm glad I was up for the job. Victory [img]http://www.phreakre.com/images/screenshots/Achieve-Sarth_with_3d_10man.jpg[/img] Thanks for the invite, Baba.

As of late, a lot of mumbling has gone on concerning the new, improved dual-wielding death knight. I have already [url=http://hordeofone.phreakre.com/blog/view/2]posted at length about dw frost dps[/url], so I will instead take this opportunity to present arguments for the new improved DW Frost DK Tank in 3.2. One of the constant conversational arguments is "DW DK Tanks lose because of parry haste". Another is "DW brings more threat". Well, we'll see.. For those of you living the blessed existence to not know what parry haste is, it is a mechanic by which an enemy parries you, causing his next attack to happen 40% faster. However, like all mechanics in warcraft, it is not that simple. The parry haste only affects the time remaining on the next melee attack swing, so if their attack speed is 2.6 seconds and they parry at 2.5 seconds, the next attack will happen in .06 seconds. Conversely, if the parry happens at 0.6 seconds into the swing timer, their next attack happens 1.2 seconds later instead of 2 seconds later [ 2.6 - 0.6 = 2.0 * .4 = .8, 2.0 - .8 = 1.2 sec]. This makes modeling parry haste a bit difficult because boss swing timers vary, about 350 different stats and states effect parry, and the effects of parrying the offhand in a dual-wield situation seem to just mess everything up. The following is how I have reasoned out the worst case scenario for the DW DK Tank: that the offhand is separately parry-able in ToT enabled strikes, that you are attacking twice as often, and battling the worst type of boss: pure physical damage with a slow swing timer. Bosses have 14% parry and 6.5% dodge from the front when you have 0 expertise. That means that the main trade off as a DW tank vs a "traditional" tank (2h dk/war/paly) is the extra parry-able attacks that you will be throwing at a much faster pace compared to a 2h tank. With 2.6spd weapons, a DK will execute ~600 attacks ,84 of which will be parried, against the average boss (5 min fight, attack from the front, parry-haste boss). 2h DK tanks will throw only ~235, causing 33 parries. So DW will evoke 34 extra attacks over five minutes compared to a 2h tank's 13 extra attacks. While this sounds bad, they don't all happen at once unless you are very unlucky, in which case I would recommend you start reading some of my dps threads. Spread out over 5 minutes, you're incurring ~2 extra attacks per 30 seconds over "traditional" tanking. This means a DW tank without any of the DW bonuses will take 5.4% more damage than a traditional tank in the worst case scenario where all parries happen simultaneously with swing timer resets. In reality, the parries will happen all over the swing timer and average to the halfway point of any given swing timer, so the real damage differential approaches 2.7% more damage when 2h frost is the baseline. DW Frost also gives up Rune of Stone Gargoyle. SG provides you with +25 def outside of the diminishing returns defense cap and +2% health. It is the best tank enchant in the game and it's all DK. I would kill for a 1h version that gives +12def/+1% health (rune of grave guardian?), but that is another subject. The logic of this rune is that there are 1h tanking weapons built for DK's (two in the entire game over iLvL 200) and they all have ~+12 def on them, so stone gargoyle provides the +25 defense and also something for us def capers in the form of 2% health. Additionally, Stone Gargoyle moves the defense soft cap up from 540 to 565 (extra 0.6944% dodge/parry). In SG's place, Rune of Swordbreaking is used for +2% parry (x2) outside of the DR. This means a DW Frost DK using SS over SG on both weapons will have 2% less life, 1% less dodge, and 3.066% more parry. A net win after sufficiently high HP levels [40k+], in my opinion. This means that a DW tank actually takes 0.633% more damage than a traditional tank after a basic rune shift. If 0.633% more tank damage is "raid ending", you're either breaking HM Uld or pugging Naxx right now. Besides, the increased threat should more than make up for the increased damage. If your dps'ers are anything like mine, they are just chomping at the bit to keep below your threat for the first minutes of a battle. Traditional frost tank spec ([url=http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deathknight=0055320000000000000000000000305050003520330023012031013510050000000000000000000000000000&glyph=201318000000&version=10192]15/51/5[/url]) accounts for ~700 TPS less threat than new DW Frost Tank spec ([url=http://wow.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=6&tal=0055300000000000000000000000305053003500330003002330013510052000000000000000000000000000]12/52/7[/url]). Either way, it's worth a shot when you think your healers are not out of their depth and DPS making a tight enrage timer is that problem. I have been alternating between 2h and DW for a few weeks now and I notice that it is easier to keep threat up in difficult situations as DW, but I take a noticeable amount of increased damage against slow hitting bosses when I am getting unlucky, but that is pretty subjective admittedly. Note: As one small addendum, if you followed my previous post on DW frost, you also know that DW builds require less hit (as weird as that sounds) than 2h builds due to the blessing that is Nerves of Cold Steel (+3% hit, +15% offhand dmg), making the soft hit cap for DW Frost 162 hit rating. In place of this 100 hit, you could perhaps fit 100 expertise, lowering your parry ratio by another ~3%, making DW Frost DK Tanks take 1.5% less damage than their traditional tank counterparts. However, this comes with a very hard trade off: Spell misses. I talked earlier about the 600 attacks DW DK's throw in 5 minutes, well there are some attacks missing from that: Icy Touch and Howling Blast. These are spells and as such are subject to the 17% or 446 hit rating (14%/367 with Virulence). Additionally, Dark Command and Death Grip also fall under spell hit. Dropping your hit to 162 hit rating, you will miss with spells approximately 13% of the time (10% with virulence). As such, your milage may vary with this new emphasis on expertise. However, this should not prevent you from stacking a bit of expertise when you can stand it, as getting as little as 50 points of expertise will lower the difference between DW and 2h tanking to less than 1%. Also, if you are the type to play with talent tree variations, picking up Veteran of the Third War will put 6 full points of expertise in your pocket and put you 1/4th of the way to the soft cap of 26 (where dodge is no longer affected). Lastly, Orc DK's have 5 points of expertise while wielding axes. The two DW tanking weapons for us: [url=http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/serilas/]Serilas, Blood Blade of Invar One-Arm [/url] and [url=http://db.mmo-champion.com/i/broken_promise/]Broken Promise [/url]. If you see other 2.6+ speed weapons with def/dodge/parry, please feel free to add a comment. Calculations: *All numbers sourced: [url=http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t29453-combat_ratings_level_80_a/ ]Elitist Jerks[/url] **Parry Haste Bosses have 14% parry, 6.5% dodge *Soft expertise cap (where dodge disappears) is 26. *Hard expertise cap (where dodge and parry go away) is 42 (unattainable for DK). - Expertise Rating: 32.78998947 ER to 4 Expertise. [8.19749 to 1] - Expertise: reduces chance to be dodge/parried by .25% per full expertise point up to 6.5% dodge, 14% parry - Which means you will be parried 14% of the time with 0 expertise. - Avg boss fight: 5 mins -- avg strikes that can be parried per min: 120 for dw, 47 for 2h. -- Rotation: 10 attacks / 20 seconds parriable, auto attack @ 2.6 x 2, vs auto attack @ 3.6 x 1. -- means 600 attacks over avg boss fight for dw, 235 for 2h. -- means 84 parries for dw, 33 for 2h. - avg boss attacks 2 seconds apart. (300 attacks in 5 mins) -- worst case dw dmg (full 40% haste): increases boss dmg by 11% (34 extra attacks)- 84 * .4 = 33.6 extra attacks. -- worst case 2h dmg (full 40% haste): increases boss dmg by 5% (13 extra attacks)- 33 * .4 = 13.2 extra attacks -- Actual difference is really 5.5% more dw dmg, 2.5% more 2h dmg. - 100 exp Rating (3.04% dodge/parry reduction) : The point at which dw and 2h are even if 2h has no expertise. ** Loss of Stone Gargoyle - 565 Def Cap -> 540 Def Cap == 25 extra def over cap * .0118 = .295% dodge/parry by lowered cap. - 565 w/ dw frost is still possible, but will be affected by 540 DR, which means the 25 def buys you .3066% d/p == 1/((.021275)+(.956/.295)) = 1/(.021275+3.241) = 1/3.26195 = .3066% dodge/parry.

Let me start this post by saying Angrybubble is an absolute beast tankadin. Sure, he overgears heroics (~5300 GS) and probably has little need to be burning through Halls of Lightning, but man is it a work of art to see him when he's rolling. Yesterday, I had the privilege of pewpewing some magic missiles while he tore through Loken's underlings like so much trash. Afterwards, I had some time to think about what exactly made this experience so enjoyable while I was queued up for another round of the russian roulette random dungeon matchmaker. Our H-HoL run only took about eighteen minutes. First, he knows what he is doing, but most importantly, he knows what everyone else should be doing. I was put off during the first few minutes of our time together by how fast he was moving. We were on top of the General Bjarngrim before I was out of combat for the first time. Since my mage is somewhat under-geared (~4500 GS right now), I was slightly uncomfortable with his combat pace. No drinking, little time for even evocate, by the time General died, I had only a single charge left on my mana gem. However, as the General dropped below 5% life and Angrybubble peeled off to go start beating on the next pack, a thought hit me: [b]this is freaking awesome[/b]. For the first time in a long time, outside of raiding, I was mana challenged and dps challenged and not just sleeping through a 5-man. The poor tree druid (3215 GS) was sitting at about 40% mana for most of the instance and seemed to be a in a similar state as I was, just rolling with the punches. After killing Volkan with one of his add packs on us simultaneously, Angrybubble charged off towards the hallway with all the statues in it. After one pull, he said "afk one sec", was gone about fifteen seconds, then came back and started running down the hallway again leaving only a "sorry about that" in his wake. I was so surprised, a PUG tank who actually values the group time enough to apologize. Not to mention how ridiculous it is that he is apologizing to us for wasting our time after clearing HoL at a pace that I have not seen since the early days of MC speed kills. From all angles, Angrybubble is the best random HC tank I have ever grouped with (myself included). He pulled just fast enough to not quite run me or the druid completely out of mana, knew when to take the mobs one pack at a time so the druid could keep us up, and knew when to pause for 5-10 seconds to let us get back above half full. At no point during the instance was I ever at 100% mana, but at no point was I ever at 0% mana either. It seemed like he had some kind of super knowledge about his gear, the incoming damage, and the overall group DPS that when he needed 9-11 mobs on him in order to take enough damage to keep his mana up, he could do it and when only 3 would be taxing for the healer, he did that too. .. all while staying #1 in DPS. So, kudos to you, Angrybubble of Lethon, you are truly a tanking superstar as far as I am concerned. What can we learn? - If the dps and healer are over half mana, just keep on trucking. - As a mana user, you should feel pressured to decide if it's time to drink or time to pew. - You will be amazed at how fast a dungeon can be pulled with a confident tank and a terribly under-geared healer. - GS isn't everything, just look at the tree druid who kept this beast of a tankadin up. - Don't be afraid to pile packs on top of bosses, especially easy ones like Volkan. - Know when to pull one pack at a time, know when it's okay to pull three of them.

Recently the developers queried the Tanks of WoW to discuss threat. One of my blogging compatriots, Gravity (of [url=http://www.pwnwear.com]pwnwear.com[/url] -- go read it if you haven't yet), [url=http://pwnwear.com/2010/02/27/is-threat-fun/ ]opined on the subject at great length[/url] with focuses on gearing and spec decisions. He also posted a helpful [url=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=23425705299&sid=1&pageNo=1]starting thread[/url] on the official tanking forums, which unsurprisingly turned into a giant woe-is-me tanking whiner thread in about eight seconds. However, I think I can answer this question without quite so much verbosity: no, threat is not fun. It is artificial and seems like a clunky game mechanic to get around the fact that people can't even get out of the damned fire, not to mention a boss that actually might move around. Fundamentally, raiding is a group puzzle solving game with timing mechanics. If you're good at Dance Dance Revolution and can solve sudoku puzzles, you're probably overqualified to be a raider in Warcraft. The entire raiding scene can be summed up with: tank(s) hold the boss(es) in some spot, DPS shoots their magic missiles at the boss, healers heal the tanks (and occasionally bad DPS who can't play DDR). At around a third into the fight, everyone presses the green left arrow, then the right red arrow, then back back, forward forward, and everyone gets back into positions to start tanking/shooting missiles/healing scrubs. Repeat at 66% into the fight, dps hard the last 10%, oh we won. Collect purple pixels, yay, I'm awesome. Inside of this group puzzle solving game, everyone has a particular job and as the tank your job is to hold the boss in one spot and keep him focused solely on you. You do this by maintaining threat. Threat is really a misnomer since you would figure the threatening people are the ones actually killing the boss (or the ones healing the ones doing the killing), but this ability for the person who does the least damage, can take the most damage, and does very little else needs a name, so threat sounds great. Threat can be considered invisible damage (like what Ovechkin does instead of scoring goals) because it really is only there to give the tanks a way to keep the boss on them. The reason we know threat is artificial? Watch as many arena videos as you feel like sitting through and notice how many strategies revolve around killing the prot warrior/paladin first. Now consider how many involve picking on the guy wearing toilet paper and doing all the damage. Alright, I think we can move on.. The upside of threat, if you can consider it an upside, it that it is pretty easy to build as long as you know which three buttons to mash like a golden retriever just fell on your keyboard. Most every tanking class has a tanking buff (frost presence, def stance, righteous fury, being a druid) that drastically increases the threat you generate from seemingly innocuous moves. Ever considered what taunting really is? Every NPC enemy in the game is basically Joe Pesci from Goodfellas. I just shouted at a mob and now it wants to kill me and only me. [img]http://www.phreakre.com/images/screenshots/goodfellas.jpg[/img] Another key problem with threat as it is now is that once you have established yourself as the primary recipient of the mob's full attention, everyone else can go to town with their magic missiles. The pace of threat for any tank that doesn't need a rectal/cranial extraction is so large that no DPS in the game could ever overcome it. Bash, bash, bash, AFK go to make a sandwich while DPS mashes out their rotations. With addons like Omen it is easy to calculate the exact point in which a boss will never leave you (unless someone else talks about their mom) with mathematical precision. 3.8 million threat, nearest rogue has 1.8 million threat and the boss has 3 million hit points left. Unless that rogue is doing 60% of the dps, you can go make your sandwich now because the fight still has about a minute and a half left .. then ten more while people argue over purple pixels and optimal resurrection order. So the question should be asked: if threat is so kludgy and artificial, what can we do to replace it? Fortunately the answer is relatively simple and has already been half implemented: increase tank DPS, lower threat per second, add more movements and threat clears to fights, lower boss damage, increase boss AOE damage, raise DPS class stamina, lower healing throughput, and make more encounters with more than one boss. - Increase Tank DPS : Already implemented and they are pretty good at it. A slight increase across the board should be made to rebalance after they are no longer the only people standing in front of the mob full time. - Lower TPS : Needs to be done in order to make the real champions of threat optimization champions again. Remember that tank in Molten Core who viewed pack tanking as his personal crusade? That guy needs to be held up as a hero, not just called out when he f*cks up. - Add more movement/threat clears : Supposedly the bosses we are fighting are generals and bodyguards and strategic geniuses that outsmarted the burning crusade, why do they act like idiots in a battleground that don't kill the healers? - Changing Taunt : Changing how threat and taunt works should make it more universal across both PvE and PvP by causing an exclusive targeting mode for several seconds (where your target is forced to target the tank) then released again. Instead of just working on hunter pets and voidwalkers off the leash, tanks would be able to force rogues to look at them for 3-5 seconds every 30 and have a chance to break up killer combos. This makes prot/tank specs useful in both PvE and PvP. - Lower Boss Damage / Lower Healing Throughput : Right now, no one but the most geared can stand in front of the ICC/ToGC bosses. The incoming damage is just too high. Because of this, the incoming healing needs to be equally as high. As a result, we are in a mexican standoff between increasing boss damage, increasing tank avoidance, and increasing healing throughput that has to end at some point. Pre-nerf, my DK was sitting at almost 60% avoidance, Cataclysm gear would put it out at 80%. The avoidance nerf was needed and is a direct result of the super high boss damage/healing rotation system that WotLK has produced. Luckily, Blizzard has already mentioned this as a problem and seems to be solving it in Cataclysm. - Multi-boss Encounters : I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been fighting single bosses for years now. Twins, Princes, and Emperors were a real treat because it makes the fights that much more complicated (without even more needless taunt cycles). Multi-boss encounters are fun and sprinkled in a bit more liberally would give tanks more things to do besides let one guy stand in the corner w/ the boss while everyone else hits him in the back and the Offtanks feel like wastes of space (or secretly hope the MT dies so they can have a moment in the sun). That is my thoughts on threat. No, it is not fun. Yes, it needs to be changed. Think I'm wrong (and I probably am)? Drop a comment here or on the official boards with your thoughts. We have the opportunity to help change the game, why not take advantage of it?