People don't understand tanking ...

While it's nice to have 'Borgthor is main tank' exclaimed in all caps with a redundancy of exclamation points, there is a serious trend in over simplifying what makes a good tank.

In this case, we were getting ready to take on some Horde home city bosses in a 40 man raid. There was already a guy informing people he was main tanking the bosses, when the raid leader asked us to pst our HP. 28k, and a confirmation that it was unbuffed (of course) was all it took to provoke the raid warning.

Now I looked at the other guy (a pally), and as far as I could see he was similarly geared, sensibly chanted and gemmed. There was also another prot warrior, waiting quietly at Chillwind Camp, who was WAY better geared than both of us.

So to quickly dispell the myth... having the most HP does not make you the best tank. Here's my quick guide about the total package that is the tank...

Firstly, I'm going to assume that for anything remotely dangerous (where you might die) a tank will be uncrittable.

Effective Health

Effective Health is a measure of how much raw damage it takes to kill a tank, assuming the tank does not avoid damage (dodge / parry / miss) or block. For magic, damage is mitigated (reduced) by resistance. For melee, damage is mitigated by armor. Most discussions ignore magic damage, but it's important to know that total HP (and resistance gear) is king for coping spell damage, particularly since magic attacks cannot be dodged, parried or blocked. For most fights however, it makes more sense to concentrate on reducing the incoming melee damage...

Armor reduces the damage taken from melee attacks, and the best way I've seen it's importance described is from the tankspot article on effective health theory, "Even though this may sound obvious, it needs to be repeated that every increase in Armor gives linear and potent scaling to the effectiveness of Stamina. Every increase in Armor is a direct increase in the effectiveness of Stamina; every increase in Stamina is a direct increase in the value of Armor."

If two tanks have HP (and attributes below) in the same ball park, the one with the most Armor will be able to take the biggest beating.

Avoidance

A tank's avoidance is the measure of how often they are able to avoid melee damage attacks altogether. A tank (but not all tanks, see below) can avoid attacks by being missed, dodging or parrying. Many statistics contribute to increasing avoidance:
- Chance to be missed is increased with defense rating
- Dodge is increased by agililty, defense rating and dodge rating
- Parry is increased by defense rating, parry rating and strength (DK only)

The more avoidance a tank has, the more often melee attacks will inflict no damage, the less healing that has to be done. However, while armor guarantees melee damage reduction, avoidance is based on probablities. If a tank has 50% avoidance, there will be times when a mob will hit (or miss) many times in a row, which is why tanks concentrate on getting their effective health to the minimum level required by content before concerning themselves too much with avoidance (which is heavily itemised on most tanking gear anyway).

If HP and Armor are in the same ball park, the tank with the higher avoidance will be able to take the bigger beating.

Comparing Different Classes

Not all tanks are created equal, and Warriors, Paladins, Druids and Death Knights have their own strengths an weaknesses. In italics above, there's lots of in the same ball park. While Blizzard have worked hard to make sure all tanks can tank most things, there major differences between the tanking classes that can make them hard to compare. For example:

Warriors and Paladins can use a shield and can block. So we get another source of damage mitigation based on block percentage and block value.

Druids can't parry, are automatically uncrittable with talents and usually have high dodge, armor and HP. A similarly geared druid and warrior tank will have different levels of HP, armor and avoidance in order to survive the same battle.

Death Knights can dual wield, or use two handed weapons to tank. They gain avoidance through strength (an important threat stat) and have a high armor modifier when tanking.

Add to this the different skills available to the different tanking classes, and it's not as simple as comparing total HP to decide who is best for the challenge. As a raid leader and guild master I have been learning more about the other tanking classes in order to best utilise them while raiding - I may write something on that in the future.

Threat and DPS

There is more to tanking than not dieing! While in WotLK the threat game has largely declined (so far), it has been replaced with tanks being able to dish much higher DPS. A tank that can make a significant contribution to party/raid DPS will help get those bosses down.

For a warrior, important threat stats are expertise, hit, strength/attack power/block value. Particularly expertise and hit are important for early on in a fight where if you get dodged, parried or miss a couple of times, an eager DPSer (or healer even) could end up on the pointy end of a sharp stick.

If all else is equal, take the Tank that can push out the most DPS.

Tanking Skill

Gear is important to a tank! Developing a well rounded meat shield that can take a beating, and have enough avoidance to avoid gobbling up all the healers mana and push out some credible damage takes a lot of work. However, all the gear in the world won't make up for a player that doesn't know their toon.

Tanks have an enormous array of offensive and defensive abilities to reduce incoming damage and bring the pain! A smart healer won't blame themselves for losing a warrior tank that doesn't know how to use shield bash or spell reflect to reduce avoid spell damage. Smart DPSers know the difference between playing with a tank that can weave all those new AOE tanking abilities into a pleasant AOE fest through and instance. One day, the healer may even thank you for understanding how to weave your AOE stun, mob attack speed / attack power reduction and defensive abilities together for when those pesky DPS have all but forgotten that sometimes, single target DPS is still useful.

Take the time to appreciate your tank. Don't just reduce them to a number. If they can talk about their experience and gear intelligently and are geared enough to have a go at the content, give them a go! They may just be a friend you haven't met yet.

WotLK and The Ancients

Borgthor is now 80, having traveled far and wide through the wonderful landscape of Northrend. Combined with leveling, gearing and raiding - a massive increase in my out of WoW workload has resulted in tumbleweeds drifting sweetly across this blog.

I'm not a huge fan of playing catch up on blogs, but if I don't - the perfectionist in me will drive the last nail into the coffin of this story... so here goes.

I am the guild master of The Ancients, on Dath'Remar. I took over months ago from Liself, and am really surprised that I haven't blogged about it yet. Aside from Zenborg's flirtation with a 25 man raiding guild, The Ancients has been the only guild I've ever known. I believe thanks is owed to Lashana, who found this guild long ago... and who first instructed me to "type 'ding' into guild chat".

Another reason this blog has been left untouched, is that I've been much more active on our guild website. Recently I added a section to the site just for myself and our council members, which as been a fantastic way to communicate within the leadership of the guild. Jondy and I have had much restricted play time recently, and it's virtually impossible to get a hold of everyone online... and multi-typing is much to much to handle. We've managed to get some overdue promotions done, and talk about the way forward with raiding...

... RAIDING! The Ancients have completed (all 10 man) Vault of Archavon, Obsidian Sanctum and Spider Wing, Plague Wing and Patchwerk in Naxxramas. We had a ball learning the safety dance, found out that Loatheb hits like a wet noodle (we one shot him the first time with two of our hunters locked out). We're short a healer or two, and some more DPS with oomph for our second Naxx group, but we're close and 25 man Obsidian Sanctum should be just around the corner.

I'm impressed with the raiding team we've assembled and pleasantly surprised how much things have improved week to week. I was overjoyed when we defeated Patchwerk on our very first night in Naxx, and two weeks later (a week off for Christmas / New Year) I was at 1500 dps, every DPSer above 2k (with Oday just shy of 3k) and the healers hardly seemed to break a sweat before the abomination hit the ground.

TANKING. I have had a blast with tanking in WotLK, but have found it a little too easy. Leveling as protection was just plain FUN. Having much improved DPS, and some great AOE abilites made questing a breeze. Add to that, a delightful resto druid and we hacked and slashed our way through the fields of mobs, with Jondy protesting about avoiding mobs that weren't related to our current quest objective. Gearing into heroics was a joy, with many BC epics holding up well - there we're plenty of quest rewards, reputation rewards to easily meet the defense cap. While we managed to 'Tour the Fjord', our targeted questing (against a meticulously crafted gear plan) and level appropriate instancing had us to 80 much quicker than I expected.

After AOEing our way through normal instances, I was actually looking foward to using some CC come heroics... until I got some sage advice, "just pull the first pack in Heroic Utguarde Keep - if you don't die... it's AOE all the way". So that's just what we did. I also have to remember that all things are relative, and I have been able to get away with wearing a pretty much full block value set for most heroics because I have my wife Jondayla (a spirited, evergreen, resto druid) to heal me through thick and thin. Now we've just got Heroic The Oculus to finish them off.

Well, that's caught you up in extremely broad strokes to where I'm at. Zenborg has been temporarily abandoned at level 71, questless, surviving on DPSing through the lower level instances, dreaming of one day harnessing some true AOE prowess.

More soon... Thanks to everyone that's bugged me to update the blog (you know who you are).

Spanking Blizzard

I'm yet to write about all the huge fun I'm having in Northrend, and I'm already compelled to give Blizzard a serve.

The queue on Dath'Remar (and many other realms) is insane. I know it's the launch weekend. I know it's the weekend. But you guys seriously got this wrong.

You've predicted a wonderfully high number of new accounts, lapsed accounts getting renewed for Wrath. You've painted a very pretty picture for your shareholders.

So why do we have a queue of about 1000 to get into Dath'Remar?

It's not like this is your first expansion. You have had this experience before with the Burning Crusade. You must have created a model about the increase in population for this expansion too. Didn't you?

Don't get me wrong. I get it. You can't run the servers to cater perfectly for everyone to log in at once. People have accounts that have toons on multiple realms, where only character can be logged into one realm at a time. If you created a server structure to cater for every scenario, your costs would skyrocket. Our subscription fees are high enough, thanks.

However, if you didn't actually meet your projections for account growth, then at least admit that you screwed us with your hardware "upgrades". If your projections where blown away by the increase in uptake, could you please use some of that fat wad of cash to lower the queues?

Lastly... here's my Saturday scenario.

1. Try to login. Oh no, a 40 minute queue
2. Get *disconnected* from the server
3. ANOTHER 40 minute queue
4. Power outage
5. Jondy gets back in since the latptop didn't require a restart
6. Borg logs into a 950 queue
7. Get *disconnected* from the queue at position 200
8. Borg logs into a 989 queue
- after 20 minutes is down to 689
- after 30 minutes is disconnected again
9. Queue is no 1006 ... there are no words.

Achievements Edition

Although I felt compelled to redo some content to get credit for my achievements, I've really enjoyed them overall. Zenborg has falled to one side before Wrath, since there was sooo much to do with Borg.

Borgthor did end up enjoying Hallow's End, getting the title "The Hallowed". The instant cast broomstick was great too!

With the nerf bat, comes new Achievements. Warrior AOE tanking improvements meant the lack of a pally tank wasn't a barrier. The nerf to boss health, and supendous improvements to DPS meant it was a white wash. We breezed through ZA post patch, taking 3 timed chests with us. It was nice to complete ZA, to round out our raiding achievements before WotLK.

I've really enjoyed the fishing achievements, and fishing in general. It was much quicker to get the fishing dailies done than the cooking... but more on that later. It was just after handing this in, that I got invited in on my spriest to a Zul'jin only ZA run to finish off ZA for him too... great timing.

I had a great time finishing off some pre-BC content with Obento, who had some renewed enthusiasm for his rogue. While I think of it, the Jenkins title was a hoot too.


We did go back and finish of Zul'Gurub, but Jondy and I have been 2 or 3 manning ZG for a chance at the turtle. No luck yet, but another great fishing Achievement.

The scourge invasion was a lot of fun, and as well as another feat of strength, helped with my Argent Dawn rep (already at revered from chasting that supply bag in my 50s).


I hadn't had a reason to travel to Ogrimmar, untill this fishing achievement. I took out about three guards, invisibility pot past four and I was there! I didn't last too long, but it was totally worth it.


One of my favourites! SSC, the shat'ari skyguard cape and a water walking pot to solo this one. I think I'll post the screenshot of Borg vs. Lurker in another post!

Gah! The achievement that had the most rework required (and we'd run out of uses for badges). Thankfully, due to the Champion of Naaru title, a few were already ticked off.


The only zones I had completed before the patch was Hellfire Peninsula and SMV, but I wasn't far off the others. Was great fun revisiting the other zones for a handful of quests.


I had a real affinity for The Argent Dawn while I was leveling Borg, and I'm really happy that the storyline of the expansion keeps them involved. Now onwards and upwards to assist the Argent Crusade!
Yes, Borg's sack is gigantique! With Zen not raiding, and Borg being on "farm only" for months, the cash was rollin' in. 22 slots is gold, and will stack up well even in WotlK.

I love bombing quests! After getting Bombs Away on the first after the patch, this rounded out all the quest achievements for Outland.


Tabards! Make sure you go to the Tabard vendor! I was planning a trip around all the exalted factions to pick mine up, until I wowheaded this achievement (yes, if google can be a verb, then wowhead should be too). They had my quest based tabards that I had "lost", as well as all the other ones. Just make sure that you bring to correct currency for Ogri'la and Sporegar.

Phew, that was a quick run down on some of the achievement I'd grabbed a screenshot for. I might have a look at them all and have a round two before I start in on WotLK ones.

However, I'm more insterested in hearing from YOU! If there are any achievements that have made you think, "wow, Borg is awesome" that I've missed let me know in the comments. If you have an achievement that you you particularly like, or are proud of, let me know!

I am the Warlock

Almost makes me want to roll one (the song, not the video).

Disclamer: A very clever archetypal metal song from Dave Grohl and Jack Black that has some strong language.

If you understand more than half of the myriad of reasons this song rocks, you might just know me in real life (or are a huge Jack Black fan).

Horseman's Helm

I'm absolutely NOT going to do all the Hallowed End achievements... there's a lot of work to be done with those. However, I was excited today to grab [The Horseman's Helm].

It's actually a DPS helm upgrade for Borg, but it also just looks plain cool!

Catharses

It's just a game. Intellectually I know this, but it only makes it worse. The changes brought in for 3.0.2 have destroyed my enjoyment of the game, until I can break out of this spiraling endless coil of despair.

Bear with me.... I'm venting. It's really not that bad. Being dramatic is going to bring catharses for sure.

I was having a ball in Burning Crusades. I've been guild master of a social guild, The Ancients who have, for their size, been kicking ass and taking names. We got Kara on farm, with a 3h22m clear. Our 2nd Kara group had just got Prince down a couple of weeks in a row. We got our first two chests in ZA too. We don't have enough toons for 25 mans, but we still managed to do Gruuls and Mags with a partner guild.

I wanted to see some higher level content. So I leveled up Zenborg, my shadow priest. With craftables, he was good to clear Kara from day one at 70. Some Kara, Mags, Heroics later, he was full epic. I took him to a raiding guild, and got 4/6 SSC, 1/4 TK, 2/5 MH and 4/6 ZA. That was a hoot until the raid schedule started to fall apart due to senior raiders heading to another guild, and the patch starting to draw nearer. I think I managed 7-8 weeks in the guild, built up my DKP, but there was not a drop to be had (particularly since at that stage we would manage only 1 or 2 bosses each night). I did have a hoot seeing the content, but it was pretty clear that wheels were falling off.

I managed to get Champion of the Naaru on both toons - even organising a full pug of Mags to get it done on Borgthor (it was very satisfying to hear the surprise on vent when people that had never grabbed a successful pug got him down).

I learnt a lot, and had a lot of fun.

Bringing up a DPS gave me a real perspective on what I was putting up with as a tank. There were bosses that we couldn't do because eventually even Jondy would OOM after 18 infernals on Prince, or the High Botanist would heal to full each tranquility phase. When I started melting faces... it all started making sense. Getting Kael down in Heroic Magister's Terrace before he even popped his shield was the least I could do.

Joining another guild with an alt was a great experience. The Ancients was the only guild I had ever been in, so it was great to see how another guild (particularly one with a greater focus on raiding) is run. The relief I felt when it wasn't me putting the raid together. When I just had to turn up and do my job. I got to explore and learn from all the things they did well (and there were a lot), and not so well. It really crystalised for me what I like about guild life, and gave me ideas about direction for WotLK.

Then the patch hit. 3.0.2 started out AWESOME! New talents, new abilities. I got a haircut!

Then the novelty wore off.

The first heroic was fun. Wow, look at how cool shockwave looks. Ooooh thunderclap affects all targets in range. Aaaahhh revenge is hitting HUGE, and it's even refreshing my shield slam cooldown.

The second heroic was unsettling. Hmmmm I don't need CC anymore, but here have a sheep target so you can turn it into a penguin. Ain't that cute. Oh dear, no one is even remotely close on threat, and I can't go a minute without seeing that misdirect icon above my head.

Then we owned Kara in 40 minutes less without breaking a sweat. Single target threat was trivial. Multi target threat was a joke... and the hunters cackled maniacally as their AOE tore shreds through elites and non-elites alike. Curator pulled with the last trash mobs? No problem, and you'll still break him out of his first evocate. It felt like a hollow victory.

Now, as I sit here, I can feel the pathology of my personality pulling me back to WoW (but the servers down, again). Achievements. I feel compelled to complete all the heroics I've already done... but the achievement is now worth nothing. I enjoyed tanking Heroic Shattered Halls because everyone wanted a Pally tank. Over geared or not, there was some sense of achievement, which is now gone. It feels like a long list of chores to be done.

Snap out of it Borg! Actually I'm feeling a lot better at the end of this post.

I finally understand all the QQ when things get hit with the nerf bat. The stories about walking 5 miles through snow to school, only to be met with corporal punishment the likes of which would be child abuse by today's standard are universal.

Blizzard have given everyone with an adictive personality a big wake up call. If the nerfing and mind boggling list of potential achievements hits hard, maybe your gaming habit is already very close to unbalanced.

So for the rest of BC, I'm going to get back to having a blast. I'm going to see ZA crumble, and charge (literally) through a stack of heroics. When WotLK hits, I'll be ready to enjoy it at my own pace, and surround myself with friends, both old and new in the World ... of Warcraft.