When the 3.1 patch landed, most warrior tanks like myself were excited about the prospect of finally being able to pick up a solid dps spec without having to sacrifice our tanking ability.  This was a fun notion for awhile, and through the course of running a good deal of 10 and 25 man content, I had amassed a decent fury and arms gear set.  I have been able to shift to my present fury offspec and deal a good amount of damage when needed.

However the grand idea about having two specs was that in some way it would make grinding quests and farming materials more enjoyable.  Alas this really wasn’t the case, as all the sudden I started having to carry non-stat food and more bandages for the purpose of…  healing.  Gone was the ability to roll from pack to pack with no downtime and no need for any healing.  No longer could I easily solo over world elites that seem to pop up from time to time in Icecrown when you least expect them.

So what do I end up doing?  I end up carrying around a set of dps gear that never gets used as I continue to grind happily in full protection gear and tanking spec.  Of late the fact that I have this unused second slot has begun to bother me.  I have a level 80 Boomkin that is getting to be pretty well geared, and a 80 Retribution paladin who is more than ready for Ulduar dps.  Trying to maintain the notion of Belghast as any form of DPSer already seems pretty defeatist compared to my other options.

Cookie Specs are fail

I’ve never been a huge proponent of the cookie cutter spec.  While I generally suggest a newer player “pick” one of the general spec designs I view these like riding a bicycle with training wheels on.  You use the tried and tested design until you get a feel for your own particular play style, and then after that you choose a spec that is tailored towards your own style.  If you look at most of the higher end players, they make little deviations here and there from the “accepted best spec”.

In a raid I have been expected to fill two very distinct roles.  I am our main tank, meaning that I need really solid single target threat generation.  This role also requires that I have as many tricks up my sleeve for being able to survive those big boss hits.  There are many talents available on the fringes of the trees that offer some added survival.  In addition the deep wounds ability allows you to general really great single target threat.

The second role I play in a raid is tanking trash, and even though blizzard denoted that Ulduar was the crowd control instance… we still end up pulling everything and AOE tanking it down. In this role you need to general a lot of threat on as many targets as possible.  The bread and butter of this process has been the glyph of cleaving.  This allows me to hit 3 targets with the equivalent of a Heroic Strike, which is really great for pissing off many of targets at the same time.  Combining this with Thunder Clap and Shockwave allows the warrior to have much of the same AOE tanking utility of a paladin, even if we have to work much harder to get it.

As a result of these two very different roles I have been forced to shoot down the middle and build a hybrid design that attempts to be the best of both worlds.  Going with a hybrid design means that I am losing some of my survival ability, but also not maximizing my potential for AOE threat generation.  I have been kicking around the idea for awhile of scrapping my unused DPS spec, for the purpose of designating two very distinct and unique builds for the purpose of being the best I can be at both roles.

Making Lots of People Angry… at once

Okay so the first design I have been kicking around is a build to attempt to maximize the warrior talents for the purpose of generating AOE threat.  Several weeks back I experimented with a build that used Unbridled Wrath, and Improved Cleave in order to give me massive AOE spamming damage.  This turned out to be a great build for tanking heroics and trash, but a fairly horrible build for boss tanking, as I had more rage than I could ever actually spend, and as a result had to give up some of my defensive ability.  However for the purpose of building my new AOE tanking spec, this served as a great building block.

5 / 15 / 51

The build is much the same as my previous design with one small tweak.  Since the entire purpose of my spec is to the best job at holding multiple targets I added Piercing Howl, which should do well at both adding cheap threat to a large number of targets, and dazing targets for the purpose of kiting them.  I only go 5 pts into the arms tree since talents like Improved Heroic Strike are defeatist for this design.  I will be using Cleave as my aggro dump, and for the most part will only ever touch Heroic Strike if I find myself taking enough damage to peg my rage.

Primary Abilities

    

Glyph of Shockwave – Glyph of Cleaving – Glyph of Vigilance

Other major usage abilities will apply like Revenge if its available, but the above are the primary attacks.  If sword and board procs we will be hitting the primary target with a free Shield Slam, but much like the revenge procs since single target aggro is not our focus I did not directly list them in the mix.  The goal of the build is to be able to charge into a pack and hit as many targets hard and fast so that your AOE does not have to hold back for long.  We are using the Glyph of Vigilance for the purpose of placing this on your primary AOE damage dealer.  This spec design is untested at this point, but I plan on giving it a thorough  workout tonight in 10 Man Ulduar.

How not to get hurt… srsly

The second spec is built around the concept of dropping some of the AOE friendly warrior talents in order to buff up some of the survivability.  Since we wont be needing to AOE tank things, it allows us to drop some of the talents like Improved Thunder Clap and Shockwave, and pick up some talents like Improved Disciplines that give you more survivability.  In addition to these we move down far enough into the arms tree to pick up Deep Wounds, which will give me a great threat return on rage spent.

16 / 3 / 52

Primary Abilities

 

Glyph of Blocking – Glyph of Last Stand – Glyph of Shield Wall

Like most single target builds this is designed to use Shield Slam and Revenge if they are up, then I throw in the usage of Concussion Blow because it is a high threat ability with a long recycle.  Last priority is to stack Devastate and use Heroic Strike as your rage dump.  We are relying on Glyph of Blocking to be proccing often from the shield slams and giving us a constant flow of Revenge ability procs.  Glyph of Last Stand and Glyph of Shield Wall are in the mix to give us faster recycle on our primary oh shit buttons for maximum survivability.  This will play a more critical role on longer fights, where I will be able to use these more frequently to give healing a break.  Again this build has not been tested fully, but I plan on giving it a work out in 10 man Ulduar tonight as well.

Bulletproof

Well… not really, but my idea is to be able to be the best of both worlds.  Sure I lose my ability to “lolfury dps” in instances, but I also add more utility to the raid as a whole.  Hopefully allowing me to shift from being the best single target tank, to being one of the best AOE tanks at the push of a button.  I created Belghast solely for the purpose of tanking, so its fitting that as we gain more flexibility with our classes, I turn around and use it to become a better tank.  Besides, when you have 3 fairly well geared 80s, you can afford to specialize each of them for a unique purpose.

My goal as always, is to be the best tank I can be and I think this new path is going to lead me to that goal.  I want to be able to generate as much threat as I can, but at the same time be easy for my healers to heal.  It is all about the team effort, and I think being able to switch hit between two distinct tanking roles will give me a lot of options as we move through the content.  The single target build will give me the survivability I need for progression content, and the AOE build will allow me to still tank content below my gear level easily without rage starvation.

 

Belghast – Soon to be Prot/Prot Warrior

“Herding Cats” is the term I have used many times when trying to describe the process of leading a 25 man raid.  Trying to take 24 other unique personalities, skillsets, and agendas and somehow get them to meld into one purpose is mindboggling at times.  It is quite literally like trying to get a room full of cats to all march into the bedroom at the same time.  Most of the time I can’t even get my cats stop trying to lay between me and the keyboard.

This week was a pretty solid one.  As mentioned earlier we downed Leviathan and Razorscale on Tuesday and after a few attempts managed to get our first Ignis kill.  This left us our entire Thursday raid to work on pulling together the XT-002 Deconstructor fight.  Last week the impromptu 10 man Ulduar I was part of managed to nail this fight without much issues, so the officers at least knew the basics of the fight first hand.  It came down to a matter of testing our ability to convey the basic concepts and get 24 other people to function as needed.

Nine Lives Lost

Over the course of nine attempts, we tweaked, prodded, and changed strategies trying to tighten up the fight and improve our performance.  We tried several things in the mix; having everyone clump up, having everyone spread out, mages take care of the corners.  The final magical mix for us at least turned out to be, a deathknight picking up the pummelers, and mages and hunters handling the bombs.  After each heart phase ALL dps would fan out and clear the scrapbots, then return to the boss to burn him to the phase.

While it took us many of attempts, each time we got a little bit closer to the goal.  We had players who had never really spoken up before, calling out status updates and giving suggestions.  The communication of the raid was better than it really ever has been to this point.  We had a few problem children causing several of the wipes but with time we adjusted strategies to take this into account.  One of the pieces we realized late in the game is that the scrap-bots were literally too much for our mages to handle alone.  Once we had all of our DPS fan out and clean up the adds, we were able to burn him the entire way.  We moved more quickly and efficiently.  We managed to get our first XT-002 kill and at the same time get two different achievements.

Signet of the Earthshaker – Thunderfall Totem – Twisted Visage

Heroic: Nerf Gravity Bombs – Heroic: Nerf Engineering

We got our second click moment for the week.  There were so many great performances this week, but I have to give some extra special kudos to our heal team.  This is a very heavy damage fight, and required a constant stream of heals flowing into me to keep me upright.  For most of the fight each hit I was receiving was between 20,000-25,000 damage per swing.  So if I did not have complete faith in my healers there is no way I could have tanked this fight.  After awhile you just have to keep your head down and stop watching your bar so closely.  Careful use of my oh shit buttons, and communicating it with my healers I think helped the fight overall.

No Gain Without Pain

The day after I am starting to get some rumbling about various members of our raid complaining about the large number of wipes last night.  Unfortunately…  we are now doing REAL raid content, and wiping while learning is the stark reality of progress.  I blame Karazhan and Naxxramas for bringing about a feeling that raid bosses should be pretty easily learned.  In truth I don’t feel like anything we did in Naxx was terribly hard, it was a simple matter of stopping people from doing stupid things.

In Ulduar the fights so far all have one or two aspects that are raid wiping events.  One player not doing what they should be doing can start a cascade effect leading to the ultimate death of the raid.  Sure we wiped nine times before we got the mix down, but the fight attempt, as evidenced by the fact we got two achievements, was a near flawless execution.  I personally would far rather spend one entire night working on getting a fight stable, so that when it finally clicks into place we know we have it solid, than spending dragging the learning process out over a few weeks.  Each rapid succession try allowed us to adjust quickly to see what was going to work for us and what was ultimate not.

Ulduar is quickly sifting the players into two groups;  those who are progression focused and willing to do whatever it takes to make our raid better, and those who probably would have preferred to stay farming Naxxramas.  Progression hurts, but until another raid member can beat my repair bills I will probably continue to have little sympathy.  Were we not making progress last night, we would have not kept pushing forward.  However each individual attempt got us a little bit closer to the goal, allowing us to tune the effort and push out a win.

We proved we were better than we have been

Sitting here at home today sick and as of yet unable to think of anything worthy of actually posting.  I had promised myself that I would be posting something everyday even if completely silly.  So here I am confronted with the process of making good on that threat. 

I’ve been to the doctor and several powerful meds to remove this debuff from me.  Luckily thusfar however my evil Asthma has yet to rear its ugly head.  In the absence of real content I thought a good compromise would be to post a few links to things I found good this week.

It’s Just a Game

There is a great guest post up on Larisa’s Pink Pigtail Inn, a great blog for those not currently reading it, talking about the dissatisfaction with players excusing actions with the denial of “It’s Just a Game”.  It’s a great read, but left me with the realization that we the bloggers are the cheerleaders that wow needs.   That statement will make a lot more sense once you have read the post.

When to Use Shield Wall

Spinks over at Spinksville presents a nice concise guide to some of the thinking surrounding how best to determine when is the right time for you as a warrior to blow your most powerful cooldown;  Shield Wall.

Should you Gear, Gem and Enchant for Defense

A good discussion on the Tanking Tips blog regarding whether or not the process of specifically gearing and gemming for defense is a good idea or not.  Good read for warriors and asks some good questions.

Saying No To Cookie Cutter Builds

Sylly over at Rolling Hots has a good post from a druid perspective on how the cookie cutter build is not always the best for your playstyle.  Includes some great discussion on how to arrive at the build that is going to work for you best.

 

Real content will return soon

Last week I stumbled across a great post on Achtung Panzercow entitled… The Tao of the Click.  After the rough week we had last week, I had almost decided to craft my own post called The Tao of the Clunk.  We were having one of those weeks when nothing really seemed to be going right.  We were short on healing, we were down a tank, and we were having to scrape hard to pull together 25 smiling faces to raid each night.  It very much felt like we were clunking along trying to get a break.

Over the tail end of the week and weekend we put much of effort into trying to smooth out some of our attendance.  I got the fun job I wrote about earlier of trying to help bring up a few of our wayward dps.  Through a good deal of adjustment, mobilization and some luck we pulled out one of our best performances thus far.  We managed a second Flame Leviathan one-shot and our very first Razorscale one-shot as well.

Gears Meshing

Last week it felt like at several points we were close to reaching that illusive click moment.  We understood the strategy for Ignis and would have promising starts, only to have things fall apart quickly.  When a key player would get placed in the pot it, a ripple effect would ensue.  After a short period of time we would get behind and start reliving the Lucy in the Chocolate Factory episode.  We had some fundamental issues with each aspect of the fight from healing, to add management and even shattering.  For the most part the movement would go smoothly, but players not stacking would often cause a scorch to go down in unexpected places, making it extremely hard for the add tanks to get the constructs molten.

We are one of those raids, that when we finally understand the fight it just happens.  It is very much the click moment that Panzercow talked about.  We needed the weekend to ponder the fight; what we were doing, what we could do better, and what elements were simply out of our control that we would have to adjust for accordingly.  When the pieces all fall into place it seems we move from impossible to farmed in a moments time.

So after two nights of focused attempts, we stood preparing for the pull.  Players executed, adjusted, and we managed to get him down to 40% on our first attempt of the night.  When we pull a single phase boss like this past 50% I know without a doubt we have the stuff to beat it.  It is just a matter of tightening things up and paying closer attention.  The second attempt starts rather inauspiciously with healing falling behind and me, the main tank, dying. 

Click

This I think served as a much needed wake-up call to the entire raid.  In a moments time we were flying without a safety net, we had to be flawless now.  Admirably that is what happened.  Each and every player dug down into that intangible stash of grit, and pulled out an amazing performance.  Every single player kept their heads down, focused and lean, only paying attention to the job at hand.  Communications were quick and efficient, and directions kept clear and precise. 

I sat there watching helplessly as my raid learned how to conquer the fight.  I can’t pretend that these kind of things just happen.  I could tell that our members had pondered the fight all weekend long.  Each and every member did something, even if small, to improve the previous weeks performance and pull out the victory.  We downed Ignis, before the nerf, and that is something Blizzard can never lessen.  In fact we somehow managed to get the Shattered achievement in the process.

Worldcarver – Girdle of Embers – Intensity

In other news we got our very first Fragment of Val’anyr from Razorscale.  It went to Elnore, our healing officer, and was very well deserved.  I hope they start coming more regularly so we can be close to crafting one by the time we down Yogg-Saron.  It was yet another week without a Titanguard drop, so once more I was both bummed and annoyed at the same time.  In pretty desperate need for a modern era tanking sword, so I am hoping that Ulduar stops being an ass soon and drops me one.  I let the only Last Laugh go uncontested to our second tank, because by similar bad luck she was still tanking with Red Sword of Courage from Utgarde Pinnacle.  Being a good friend tends to bite me in the ass in the long run, but I can’t change who I am.

Twisted Nether T-Shirt Contest

The good people over at the Twisted Nether Blogcast are hosting a T-Shirt design contest.  The hosts are resolved to attend blizzcon and want a nice shirt to wear showing off the website.  I decided I would throw my hat in the ring and try and cobble something together.  If anyone out there is feeling artistic its to support a good site and they are offering some nice prizes including a 60 day wow game card for first, and your choice of a common TCG loot card for second and third places.  The monstrosity below is my submission.