The Angry Dwarfs

So, the newest event in World of Warcraft has officially started. The Pilgrim’s Bounty, based on the real Thanksgiving, is a quite short, one-week long event full of cooking and many turkeys.

And then, even more turkeys. Handle it!

I’ve already almost finished doing the achievements on both of my primary characters – the only real thing I have left is shooting some poor rogues with the Turkey Shooters you get from the dailies. Unfortunately that will have to wait a while for tomorrow when the dailies will reset, since I don’t have enough shooters – but I’m already prepared with all the necessary food made and waiting in the banks.

It’s a bit silly, because once again I’ve done over 90% of a world event’s achievements in less than one day, but I guess Blizzard makes the events for everyone, not just for our achievement hunting group that will stay up half a night doing that stuff.

A bonus from the event – since you have to cook everything yourself, there are special recipes covering cooking from 1 to 350. That means you can skip Azeroth and Outland cooking altogether, so I’ve finally leveled my druid’s cooking skill over the 240 or so it has been on for a while. And on 350 skill you can already start learning the Northrend trainer recipes, so I guess I’ll be doing some extra fishing during the week.

Oh, and we finally got the Onyxian Whelp today as well – and she’s, well… Can’t really say she’s cute, because she looks like a whelp after all (only with Onyxia’s miniaturized head), but the random animation she has is absolutely awesome. She makes an emote “Onyxian Whelpling takes a deep breath…” and runs around puffing smoke out of her mouth. Oh well, still a long way to go, little one, but it’s a good start!

Popularity: 18% [?]

At least, that’s what Chronis of <Loot and Run> on Deathwing-EU says, so it must be true. Right?

I’ll show you the whole conversation, because I made me smile on an otherwise dull evening.

Chronis > logic.

Especially after I explicitely told him I was soloing stuff, yet he kept going, babbling something about HP reg not working in raids. Which it obviously does, because why wouldn’t it.

The ignore & insult at the end is also a classic.

Popularity: 16% [?]

A little something I’ve found, strangely enough, browsing around World of Matticus’ comments for some post. That pointed me towards Askevar’s post (I love that blog’s name. All tanks should.) and further towards Koriel of Whatisboom and Tarsus of Tanking For Dummies (who had two additional questions about encounters, so I grabbed them as well). Well, since lately the warrior is my most played character, I think I can join as well. So, here it goes.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?

Vrethir, protection warrior for life. I’m using a mixed 15/3/53 spec that includes both Deep Wounds (for threat) and Improved Disciplines (with glyphed Shield Wall, for our 10-man hard modes). It’s not the best choice, but it works and saves me gold I would have to use for respecs.

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

All of the above. Raids (10-mans and some more 25-mans recently) and five-man instances are what I do the most, since I’m mostly a PvE player. Running battlegrounds as a protection warrior is also very fun and enjoyable. No arenas yet though, maybe someday.

What is your favorite encounter to tank, and why?

Mimiron (including our tries of Firefighter). It’s a very varied fight, and you have lots of things to do, so you can’t be bored. Hard mode of Hodir is also not as boring as it might seem. Single-tanking the third phase of our Yogg-Saron fight was also very enjoyable.

What is your least favorite encounter to tank, and why?

Loatheb, Vezax (since I’m usually on boss duty due to cooldowns), Ignis (if we’re doing the speed kill and I’m on boss duty again) – from a tanks perspective they are both tank and spank fights that are simple and boring. I have to admit I like to do these once in a while for a change, but I prefer something where I can use more of my abilities.

What is your favorite tanking spell for your class and why?

That definitely must be Shield Slam. It combines a ton of aggro, dispels, and dps in one handy tool.

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?

A warrior uses pretty much everything he can, but if I have to choose one of the least used it would be probably Mocking Blow – it’s only useful once in a blue moon if my taunt misses and the boss absolutely needs to be on me right now.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?

Mobility, because the Warbringer talent is full of awesome, and I would not like a tanking spec that does not have it (which is also one of the reasons why I have an arms offspec, not a fury one – but that’s not really tanking related ;] ). Single-target tanking comes as a very close second, but none of the other tanks are as mobile as warriors are.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?

AoE tanking. Yes, I can do it and not get the dps killed in a process, but it’s not what I like or what the warriors are good at. Sure, we can get some initial aggro with Thunderclap followed by Shockwave, but at that point we’re waiting till they come off cooldown, flailing wildly at both tab and the cleave button.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?

Facing the boss, introducing my big shield to his ugly face (or whatever he/she/it might have instead. I’m not picky). Or picking up the adds, if there aren’t too many of them.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?

I don’t mind tanking alongside any class at all, as long as there is a good player (with his brain mostly intact) behind it. I say mostly, because apparently if you’re tanking, you can’t be 100% normal. ;)

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?

Just as I don’t have a preference, I don’t really have a least favourite co-tank. Do your job and you’re fine with me.

What is your worst habit as a tank?

Showing up to a heroic run in my block value gear (which is not bad in itself), and laughing at the DPS I’ve outdpsed afterwards. Usually when I’m looking for another pug DPS to a 5-man instance, I’ll put a message in /trade saying “LFM DPS <insert instance name>, must be able to outdps me” or something similar.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?

Non-tanks pulling stuff before me. Do that, and I will just stand there waiting for you to die, and pick it up afterwards. I’m the tank here, if I wanted you to pull something, I’d ask you.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?

Mostly yes, and the current expansion did a lot of good things for protection warriors. We still lack some more decent AoE tools – while Thunderclap and Shockwave are good, once they’re on cooldown we can only tab around the mobs wildly and spam Cleave, which is not cool at all.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?

Omen is obvious here. Also Recount is very useful, especially the Deaths part of it and the detailed information about what happened before I died – it helps me to quickly find out if it was my mistake or somebody elses. It could be a bit better though, as it doesn’t show the cooldowns I’ve used, only heals and incoming damage.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?

It’s a bit hard to choose something, so I’ll go with Tarsus – we’re no longer THE main tank. I can do any job in a raid, and while I personally like tanking bosses (and adds to some extent), I’ll go and tank that 15 whelps that just showed up.

Also, there is that ganking thing, since Deathwing-EU is a PvP server. Oh look, a lone warrior, let’s gank him! Well, if I’m not afk, and you don’t have friends, there is a very high chance that this will not end well for you. A chance, because I am of course not invincible (and will most likely lose versus a good PvPer, which I’m not), but I’ve taught enough Hordies their lessons both during my leveling as protection and while running around as a level 80.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?

Use all of your availaible tools. Warriors have a tool for every occasion, learn how and when to use them.

If it can be disarmed, you should do it. If a spell can be interrupted, you should interrupt it. A warlock is doing a lot of threat? Put a Vigilance on him, and Intervene him if you have a chance. A Nerubian Burrower is trying to submerge and there is no blue stuff anywhere near? Stun it, you have 3 different stuns to use.

Don’t just stand there and mash Devastate.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?

EH of course, but I like balance, so I’m not stacking it blindly. Still, it’s needed just to survive things like ToGC, and with the introduction of the Sunwell Radiance-like aura in Icecrown, that’s not going to change anytime soon.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?

Druids. While I have a druid character, I’ve never really tried the feral playstyle on him – I’ve got a rogue and a warrior, why on Azeroth would I want another?

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?

I use a lot of macros that combine different abilities in one button – and even then I’m running out of easy to reach keybinds. Other than that, I use Satrina Buff Frames to have a separate buff bars with important buffs and debuffs – important being the things I have to watch out for, like Sword and Board proc or Demoralizing Shout and Sunder Armor timers.

I also use Grid all the time, even in heroics – it’s much easier to see the healers mana on it, and much easier to choose a dps to Intervene or put Vigilance on it. This gets more tricky in 25-mans, but with enough practice you can do it quickly.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

My main gear set is mostly balanced – it has decent Stamina, not bad Avoidance values, almost capped Hit and Expertise. If I need to change something, I carry around other pieces of gear – like the Brewfest Stamina trinkets, which I will equip if the encounter is mostly about high unavoidable (or magical) damage that my dodge trinket will be useless on. If I need more threat, I can switch one ring back to the Emblem of Valor one at a cost of some health.

Popularity: 7% [?]

…does it mean I can as well?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Faction Champions, ToC-10. I switch my warrior to Arms to provide MS debuff, since nobody else in the raid has it. We kill them pretty easily.

We group up for the Val’kyr, so I switch back to my tanking spec, one of the healers switches to dps in order to get the speed kill easier, ready check, we pull them.

I notice dps pulling aggro off me very early, which usually doesn’t happen. Oh well. Grab the boss, devastate it a few times so it doesn’t go off me again, pull it closer to the other one. Then I notice something weird – my shield slam button is greyed out and when I press it, it doesn’t do anything.

I look at the character tab and see that I’m still in my Arms gear. With a 2-hander and a blue pvp trinket.

“Guys you won’t like what I’m about to say.”

I quickly switch the weapons around, since that’s all I can do while in combat, and we proceed to kill it. Fortunately the normal mode Val’kyr hit like sissies, even with 418 defense + 20 resilience.

(And yes, I’m still alive and kicking.)

Popularity: 5% [?]

Being a bit bored about a month ago from a lack of raiding, I’ve decided to see what can I do to amuse myself. I knew I was able to solo the Tiger boss in Zul’Gurub, since I’ve tried it some time ago, but one boss is simply not enough, even if he has a chance to drop an awesome mount.

After a bit of searching around the Internet, I’ve found a nice warrior spec that gets Bloodthirst alongside some prot talents, and it turned out to be a very nice and easy (can’t say efficient since I’m doing about 1k dps in that spec) way to kill bosses.

Preparation

Talent spec I’m using for this is 5/31/35 with Glyph of Bloodthirst. Unfortunately taking Bloodthirst makes it impossible to take the awesome end talents in Prot, so it’s not really recommended for doing anything else. Glyph of Bloodthirst is not optional, but for the other two you can do well with any of these: Glyph of Enraged Regeneration, Glyph of Shield Wall, Glyph of Last Stand and Glyph of Heroic Strike.

As for gear, my warrior wasn’t the best geared one around when I started doing this (BoEs, crafted stuff and some parts of heroic/Naxx-10 gear) and I’ve still succeded without too many problems. If you can tank Naxx-10, you can pretty much farm yourself some nice mounts. For Onyxia, I’ve also had some fire resistance gear prepared, but I’ll talk about it later. Of course it gets a lot easier once you get more gear – what you can get right now in 3.2 with the Emblems of Conquests is completely sufficient.

Last thing you need for doing this stuff is of course a raid group. The way I do it, is I invite some guildie’s alt to a party and then convert it to a raid. After this that person can freely log out or relog to another character – their offline alt will stay in the raid. In fact, the raid group doesn’t even disband if you yourself log out, so you can send yourself some pots or stuff from another character. Also, don’t forget to turn the loot method to Free For All to skip the annoying greed/need roll windows from appearing.

And now, lets get to the bosses themselves. In this article, we’re going to visit three instances. Lets start with Zul’Gurub – a 20-man raid instance located in Stranglethorn Vale.

High Priest Thekal

Your first target in Zul’Gurub is High Priest Thekal, the Tiger boss. The fight itself isn’t very hard, but you might want to clear up his trash packs, which are annoying. While fighting them, you want to focus on the Gurubashi Axe Throwers. You need to kill them as fast as possible, because they have a chanelled 15 seconds stun (with added damage element), which might very well kill you if there are any other adds around or you are at low health. Also, if you aggro any Zulian Cubs, be sure to kill them first, as they tend to run away and aggro additional packs. Believe me, three Axe Throwers are annoying enough, 9 of them at once will get you killed in no time.

Once you get them out of your way though, the boss itself isn’t that hard. In the first phase he comes at you with his two adds (and two tigers which you’ll want to kill), and they have to die more or less together. After the first one dies you have around 15 seconds to finish the other two before the dead ones respawn with full health. Another thing to note is that one of the add is a priest and will try to heal. You need to interrupt it, which is pretty easy with Shield Bash.

The way I do it is I set the priestess (Zealot Lor’Khan as seen in the picture) as my focus and have the focus cast bar enabled, so that I can easily see when she starts casting the heal, target her by clicking the focus frame and interrupt her. I could probably make it even more easier by setting up a macro for that, but for now I’m too lazy to do it.

Once you kill the annoying trio, Thekal changes his form to a Tiger god avatar and you have to kill him again. That phase is very easy, as he doesn’t hit for much and does not have a heal of any kind. He summons some more tiger adds though, and you might want to kill them as they’re a bit annoying. One thing he does is a knockback, so remember to fight him with your back to the wall or on the hill to your right side.

Gahz’ranka

It’s the second boss worth killing in Zul’Gurub. It has a chance to drop [Tome of Polymorph: Turtle], which still might be sold for a nice price on the Auction House (or be used as a nice present for your local friendly mageling). The fight itself is easy, just remember to fight with your back to the wall again because of the knockback.

You can’t fight Gahz’ranka immediately though – first you need to complete the quest Nat’s Measuring Tape, and have to buy a [Mudskunk Lure] from him (stacks to 20, so I just bought a full stack, saves time). Then fish up 5 Zulian Mudskunks from the fishing schools in ZG, and use the Lure to summon the boss.

Bloodlord Mandokir

Mandokir, or the Raptor boss as he’s often called, is your third target in ZG. Just as with Thekal, you should clear up his room a bit so you won’t get feared into another pack. The adds aren’t very tough – first target is always the Priest, then Champions, then Raptors and save Blooddrinkers for last since they will try to life drain the other mobs in the pack. This is of course interruptable and they can be stunned.

After you have a comfortable safety zone, kill the Vilebranch Speaker and Mandokir will aggro. Take him on the temple stairs, put up Demo Shout, Thunderclap and a stack of Sunders, and start killing him. He has a raptor add with him, which you can totally ignore – in fact killing the raptor first enrages Mandokir for two minutes, which you don’t really want.

He has a bunch of abilities, most of which I totally ignored. Only one you can’t ignore is a fear, which you should get out of by using your Berserkers Rage. Other than that, keep your debuffs on the boss, use Bloodthirst every time it’s up (for me it was about 1.7k healing each time, with 4 second cooldown), and dps the boss. If you get to about half health, pop Commanding Shout, Last Stand and Enraged Regeneration to heal up, and continue. Use Shield Wall early in the fight, so it can be off cooldown later again.

That should be enough to kill the boss if you keep it long enough. Takes a few minutes, but a raptor mount is totally worth it. Oh, and don’t forget to clear the raptor packs around the boss for the pet as you go there.

Onyxia

I went to solo Onyxia simply out of pure curiousity if I can do it, and for some of the rare drops she has (mostly the Orb of Deception, since I cba camping the Dire Maul arena). It was also a test if I can solo the questline for Quel’Serrar, which requires you to forge the sword in her Flame Breath.

To do it, you need some kind of fire resistance. I’ve had 138 points of it, which was enough – 50 from [Lesser Flask of Resistance], 15 from [Drakefire Amulet] (you can skip it, but as I’ve had it, why not use it once in a while), 20 from cloak enchant (I used my [Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions] for it) and 53 from [Inferno Tempered Boots] with [Flame Armor Kit] slapped on them. While using all that silly gear I wasn’t even uncrittable with about 524 defense, but it wasn’t a problem at all. If you have a spare helmet, you can also use the [Arcanum of the Flame's Soul] availaible from Kirin Tor quartermaster for another 25 points, and [Lesser Arcanum of Resilience] for yet another 20 points of resistance on legs. The extra 45 resistance is definitely not needed for Onyxia, but it might help you later if you want to get a shot at getting Thunderfury.

Strategy is basically the same as for all the bosses – keep debuffs up, use Bloodthirst each 4 seconds, pop Shield Wall on every cooldown and LS+ER combo when low on health. The second phase, when she takes off and starts flying around the room, is the most tricky and annoying one – fortunately she still can be hit while she’s in the air, but you need to run after her to keep close (which isn’t that easy without Warbringer and in-combat Charge). She’ll also summon her whelps, but they don’t do much damage and will usually die after a few Thunderclaps, so don’t even bother wasting rage on Cleaving them. Just keep your health up with Bloodthirst and you’ll be fine.

Also, be prepared for a very long fight, as it took me over 25 minutes to kill her. She didn’t drop anything cool either, but oh well, 40 gold is still enough for my repair bills of that evening.

Attumen the Huntsman

And now the last one of soloable, mount dropping bosses. If you’ve been around in Burning Crusade, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with this guy. If not, he’s the first boss of TBC’s introductory 10-man raid dungeon, the Karazhan, which is located in Deadwind Pass. You still need [The Master's Key] to enter it, but you might be able to open the doors with high level Skeleton Keys if you’re a blacksmith, as I’m sure they can be opened by a rogue’s lockpick ability. If not, simply ask someone to open the gate for you, they don’t even have to be in your group, and can go back to their business as soon as you enter.

You need to clear all the trash mobs on your way to Attumen, because otherwise they will join the fight and wtfpwn you. They’re pretty easy, but don’t get cocky and don’t try grabbing more than one pack at a time – they can still kick your butt if there’s too many of them. Remember that they have a pretty nasty respawn timer of 30 minutes, so you need to be quick. They don’t respawn once you pull the boss and after the kill.

Once you get to the boss himself, you will see Midnight, the Attumen’s horse standing alone in the stable. Just pull her and start slowly dpsing her down. After a while Attument himself will join the fight and add a bit of damage to the fight – don’t forget to disarm him once in a while to keep the damage lower. There are two annoying boss abilities in this encounter.

First is that the horse keeps using Knockdown, doing about 1.5k damage on top of the normal hits and stunning you for 3 seconds. That makes it really important to use Bloodthirst on every cooldown to regain the lost health.

Second large annoyance is the Intangible Presence. It is used once every 30 seconds and lasts for 12 seconds. Normally you would decurse it, but as a protection warrior you just have to deal with that. It makes keeping your debuffs on targets and regaining health through Bloodthirst a bit harder than on normal fights, especially when you are on a lower level of gear and don’t have a lot of hit and avoidance.

After you bang on Midnight for a while and get her to 25%, Attument will mount her. If you can get to this part, you have almost won. He will still use all abilities from the first phase, but it won’t be so annoying as you only have one target this time. Keep disarming him, keep all the debuffs and best luck with your drop rates!

Until next time!

That will be it for now, as this post already is very late and getting long. Sometimes in the hopefully near future, there will be a part 2 of this guide with even more soloing. See you soon!

Popularity: 50% [?]

… that the blogosphere is already full of it, but hell, whatever.

She has lurked in her lair and done battle with the many brave adventurers who travelled to that familiar location over the years. Now, in honor of the World of Warcraft 5-year anniversary, the dreaded brood mother Onyxia is being revamped to make a return to the forefront of Azeroth, as part of our big plans for the upcoming 3.2.2 content patch.

(source)

How awesome is that? We get to fight Onyxia again, not soloing/duoing her for easy gold, but with groups of 10/25. On top of that, she drops a flying mount and T2-lookalikes with current stats. On top of that, we also get a mini Onyxia Whelpling, just like we all received a white bear last year.

It’s rehashing of the content again, yes, but you know what? I don’t care. I’ve been fighting dragons all the time, I can fight one again, why not. I will be missing soloing her, as they plan to remove the old level 60 version, and it sucks a bit for all the guilds that locked their level at 60 and refuse to level up and buy TBC and whatever, but other than them nobody will really care. Oh and it makes me wonder if they make her so she still can be skinned for Onyxia Scales and her breath used for Quel’Serrar questline. Fortunately I’ve done it already, but it might be good if the functionality is not broken.

Anyway, I’m an excited dwarf. Can’t wait till November.

Popularity: 22% [?]

After a lot of tries…

Details and a little guide for having fun as a Protection Warrior coming soon.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Well, Deathping died this evening, so I got bored. It started with an easter egg thread on the General forums, where I found the first two. I knew about the hidden warlock class description, but I didn’t know about the tooltips when you mouse over the header pictures on the site. I’ve started browsing around, and found a lot more of these. Some of them are quite amusing, so I’ve decided to share. No spoilers though, you have to click and see for yourself.

• Classes main page – the red dragon and the warlock “Type” line.
• All the original races have tooltips on their pages: Dwarves, Tauren, Night Elves, Humans, Orcs and Gnomes have the best ones, the other two also have some, but not that good. Draenei and Blood Elves got nothing unfortunately.
• Cenarion Circle, Cenarion Expedition and Keepers of Time – these three does not require a comment really, do they.
• The Consortium and Scryers and Aldor – quite good as well.
• Lower City – each kid has one, read from left to right.
• Argent Dawn, Zandalar Tribe, Kurenai, Timbermaw and Sporeggar have some as well, but they’re not that good, so no links.
• Reputation main page – there are two screenshots on the right side – notice the name of the Tauren character in them, and the emote on the second one.
• Battlegrounds main page – Face of the Orc on the left, then of the Elf on the right, awesome. :)
• Eye of the Storm – head of the Tauren.
• World guide main pages – the poor cow lost in Gnomeregan :)
• STV Fishing Tournament – Gnomes, read from right to left for a change.
• Pirate’s Day – this one is not on the header, but on the Blood Elf on the right.
• Darkmoon Faire – does it really need a comment? Also the subpages have tooltips on the characters in the contents, check them out as well.
• Hallow’s End, Midsummer, Love is in the Air and Lunar Festival also got some tooltips, but nothing special.
• Be nice guide – the Tauren and the Human on the right side.
• Getting started guide – all images on the right, the bottom two are the best though.
• Death system – images on the right as well.
• Exploring the Map – a classic on the image.
• Combat Pets – again both of the images on the right. Made me laugh.
• Food and Drink – the Tauren guy.
• Dressing Room – this one has a very amusing header and a tooltip on the top right character. The other two have tooltips with their gear that gives that look, pretty cool as well.
• Resting – the sleeping Gnome has a tooltip, but it’s pretty boring. The sleeping Orc’s one is much much better.
• Dancing – header again.
• Game Guide – on the header and on most of the thumbnails. Some are pretty awesome.
• Boxes (but also as a header on other pages) – above and a bit to the left of the gryphon.
• Parties – enlarge the first screenshot (the one with greed/need thumbnail) and read the conversation.
• Voice Chat – another tooltip that made me really laugh, on the Blood Elf female.
• Honor System – long tooltip on the header. Other pvp pages also have a header tooltip, but it’s not very interesting.
• Outdoor PvP – very amusing header once again, one of the better ones. Also, the comment under the Silithus map thumbnail, doesn’t that remind you of anything?
• Player Stories – header image again. The rest of Community section has a nice tooltip as well.
• Parental Controls – another header image tooltip.
• WoW Credits – the last line.

And that should be all. Know anything that I’ve missed? You liked some more than the other? Let me know in the comments!

Popularity: 34% [?]

Well, Midsummer Festival meta is fortunately finished on my achievement-hungry rogue, all that’s left is to run around with some alts grabbing whatever fires they can find – it’s a really nice chunk of gold or experience and all it requires is some travel.

Of course I haven’t got any of the pets yet – I’m missing over 200 blossoms for that, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to get them, since something apparently went wrong with resetting the yearly quests. Fortunately Blizzard is working on a fix, according to this post on the support forums. Hopefully they will just reset the quests, though with the fires counting for the 3000 quests achievement it might be a little tricky.

I’d like to also point you in the direction of the Postcards from Azeroth – a blog full of… postcards. Well, screenshots that look like them, actually. Very nice screenshots, I must say – they remind me that this game is quite full of interesting scenery. I only wish I could download some of them in some higher resolutions, as I would definitely use them as the laptop’s wallpaper. On the other hand, it’s a nice effect of them being small, I like them either way. :)

Popularity: 29% [?]