Did you know that some consider it rude for you to tell them how to play their character? Some people don't want to know what they are doing wrong, they just want to play?

1st Argument

I have ran into many bear druids who stack agility. They are not wrong, that is how they play the game, they dodge and crit more and thus mitigate more damage. I preach mana pool because it makes the healers life easier, and just cuts down over healing in most cases of progression. But what if you don't play with a good healers at all, healers that are late with heals and everything else. Then those druids play the class perfectly. Please don't judge a bear by hit points, there is a lot more to tanking than that.

2nd Argument

This may not stand true for all situations, But why be an insufferable know it all, why tell people how to play. Hey your rotation is wrong, hey your missing this spell, in the middle of party chat. At the very least if you have to say something, say it in a whisper and not condescending.

"Hey, I have found that using wild growth is nice to use instead of spamming rejuvenation, have you tried it or just messing around?"

instead of something like

"Hey, Use WG noob!"

Just my 2 cents on something I thought would be common knowledge.

Fuzz

Sorry for the recent drought in posts, but I will try my best to let the updates continue.

Emalon!!!!!!!

I was playing around on an alt the other day when a buddy of mine was hollering about a tank who just couldn't tank the adds of emalon. I had to go save them, and it was a druid who couldn't do it, So guess what I'm going to write about today!

Background: Emalon is a watcher in the pvp area of wintergrasp, he has 4ish adds around him, keep the adds away from emalon, usually this is done with 2 tanks on either side of the roomish. One add enrages and dps kills the enraged add. Right after this is done you will see a warning if you have dbm that says another joins the fight. The tank needs to taunt that add before it wipes your group. It is this reason that you need your most aware tank to be the off tank in this fight.

Best way to start this fight off as a druid, is smack enrage, run in and swipe, You can also aoe taunt if you don't have a lot of attack power or hit rating. At this point is the most important thing, managing the spawning adds. You have to get a camera angle that allows you to see the other tank as well as your adds. As the new add spawns, I suggest a mouse over taunt. There are problems with that, such as accidentally taunting the boss off the other tank. But you don't want to move too much in taunting, just a few steps and get it. Whenever the add enrages use a barkskin and such. Easy fight once you figure out how to get the adds.

Sanford

Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle is in my opinion an extremely easy instance for moderate/mid level gear players. The most common mistake made in H UP is going into it with a group in greens and blues and expecting to roll it like Utgarde Keep. That is simply not the case.

Note: In this instance there is lots of mobs, No matter what your gear level, or skill level, help your healer. Don't be afraid to use some cool downs before spinny boss to help him out. Make sure that you don't have 10 mobs standing behind you where you can't dodge them. Keep a close eye on the healers mana. These are always rules to tanking, but very very important in here.

First boss: Svala Sorrowgrave.A Valkerie with some health, very easy fight especially if you have a range who can shoot at the boss while its in the air. Achievement: I am not saying its impossible, It just sucks to do as a bear because with maul and swipe hitting multiple targets. Hard for us to tank that achievement here. Best way is to have another tank or a hunters pet, try to tank the big guy near the sword and move them when it comes down killing the scourge.

Watch out during Palehoof for the healers mana, here and there the aggro tables are a little weird, don't be afraid to use taunt. Boss fight is really easy just zerg it and let the healer do his thing, tap barkskin and trinket if you got it during the fight. Really easy.

The next boss is the hardest in the dungeon. This is often referred to as the gauntlet, I just simply call him spinny guy. (skadi the ruthless)

Preamble: Soon as you walk into the room, guy takes off. As the fight goes on harpoons will hit the floor, someone in your group(not you) will shoot them at the flying boss in the sky from the launchers at the end of the hall way. After 6 shots with the launcher the guy flys down and attacks pretty much whoever is closest to him.

Ok, first when the event starts run half way down the corridor( or all the way if you have really good dps.) Now, just sit and camp the room where the 2 or 3 guys spawn. Kill them off and keep your camera slightly tilted, Soon as boss comes down, Taunt, Then FFF then Mangle. IN that order so that he doesn't one shot a person. You taunt for the snap aggro, then use your usual tanking rotation. Now the boss hates you, you dps for a while, he starts to spin. GET OUT OF THE WAY. If he spins towards you run!!!!!! If he spins away, Watch him, if he gets close to a dps or someone, you can taunt him towards you while hes spinning to save your dps or heals. Very important. If he touches the healer, you will probably have to do the fight over again, or battle rez him very quickly. Once you get these things down this is a fairly easy fight, just don't under estimate wind whirl or whirl wind, whatever it is.

Last but not least is the king, He is just plain annoying, Open with the usual, FFF, then mangle for snap aggro. Every like 20 seconds he will put you to sleep, and unlock a box. Really the boxes are nothing to be too scared of except the one that's much more harsh than the Violet hold bubble things. They can kill you. Its the last box on the left side, it kills people. If he gets this box, stay away from the silver things eventually he will freeze you again and if your near the silver things your probably dead. After that the boss is cake, just annoying.

UP the down and dirty version by Fuzz

Read here on Fyurae's Blog. We are rolling out to defend our brothers and sisters on foreign lands! Come play just make some things for level 1's. Like running people through instances, make a DK and run them through. Thousand playes at least in this guild, more coming every day. If your bored playing the same old way, try something different.

Ill be there whenever im bored, sanfod

Tonight I write with specifically uld and raid toc on my mind. I have started to get a little tired of the fire effects that blizzard keeps repeating into every boss fight. I swear it feels like in every boss fight with the new content whenever blizz is sitting down going well hmmm this fight seems boring. Some dork says, "Fire, burn burn, add fire!!!!"

I am all for making encounters hard and not watering down the game, I liked it when wiping on bosses 20 times before you got it down was great. Not just one shotting or 3 shotting a boss that blizz spent 6 months creating. I want the constant struggle, the horrible feeling going to bed at night, the drive to defeat them, People, everyone farming mats to make sure your guild succeeds. But can't they become a little more creative, and toc doesnt count, Just because the fire is yellow and lands on you, its still fire.

I guess blizzard maybe tapped all its thoughts and resources as it made 3 games, and with the announcement of an expansion making all the lower level stuff going to higher levels, some new content announced but no idea what it could be, to me just proves that we are in for more annoying fire. I wouldnt even mind for some more spikes like in AN, or more guys running around whirwinding or windwhirling, I can never remember which one it is. More having to kill eachother like in old kingdom, Or even better something original. Use the battle group and have horde and alliance characters 5 in each instance join together with out speaking try to work together on something. Maybe more Vehicle fights like flame but actually allow you to use your talents and such. Maybe an instance that grows you as giants running you across west fall fighting giant dragons or harvesters.

Something, other than fire blizz, I beg of you.

Fuzzy

(ps: more tanking guides coming later on)

I continue my series of posts for tanking information with a quick guide to some information that many other bloggers probably don't discuss. This is for all tanks, but specifically druids.

The main skills a tank requires is being able to hold threat and not get your team into more than it can handle. A close third is knowing when to using your cool downs to help your healer. 3 things

Logic: If you don't know an instance and your gear is lacking, it is probably best to take it slow. Use your resources, a hunter to help pull in tight spots. A dk to pull a caster closer to you, and/or line of sight. Line of sight is very important(if you don't know, LOS as its called, is when u attack then move away from the target putting a wall or such in front of you and the target, this is usually used against magic targets and helps to make them move so you don't pull pats or other groups.) Try to use your cool downs as you go, especially barkskin and just relax. I can remember not being relaxed and freaking out every time a mob would run by me. If you have a hunter in the group and you see a target run by you on a pull, within a few seconds see a target above your head, the hunter is decent enough to misdirect the target back to you. Doesn't always happen, maybe you will have to taunt the target, But dont lose your composure. Relax and have fun.

Macros:I use a couple macros to make my tanking life easier

#showtooltip
/assist [target=mouseover]
/cast Growl

This particular beauty allows me growl at whatever my mouse is hovering over, very useful for that mob you see going out of the corner of your eye.

Got a dps who likes to ignore markes or what ur attacking. Try

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,harm] Growl

If you hover over the dps on grid or in game frames and click this macro, it will taunt what hes targeting. Very helpful in pug groups.

I also use one like the first one for FFF, just to help me pull quickly and easily.

Addons: For raids you have to have GRID. If a player lights up in red, most likely they have aggro. Very important to be able to know that fact esp when doing trash or anything with multiple mobs. If you see a target on that in red then you know you need to get over their, or use one of those macros.

Deadly boss mods, is awesome to have for all the timers and raid warnings it gives.

And last but not least for essential tanking is omen/wows threat meter. It is awesome to know who has hate on what, whether its another tank or anything. I recommend this for all classes and types.

simpleraidtarget icons is an addon that allows you to very very very simply put on icons above baddies heads. Basically with one button or shift click they can put an icon above their head.


Tanking is ultimately all about how quick you react to situations. You to be super quick and decisive. As content continues to grow, more and more tank and spank will become dead and more interesting fights will come. I am sure I will be adding more thoughts to this as we go.

My addon list:

Grid, click, dbm, omen, outfitter, pit bull, domino's, cartographer, add on control panel, miks scrolling battle text, recount, sell junk, simpleraidtarget icons.

For this post, most of the research of class dynamics and tanking mechanisms I did myself. I am sure that there is hundreds more addon's and macros that can make it even easier, this just happens to be what I use, I don't claim to be an addon master or even close. Fyurae has spent a decent amount of time with addons in her years and pretty much gave me what she thought I could use, I added one or 2 here and there.

san
(in a side note, this post was put up before I could edit grammar and completely finish it)

I am not changing my stance on the new expansion, but I did have a thought today. I was doing a VH on my alt dwarf priest,he on the stairs while I was on the top them, he didn't have line of sight due to height, I assume. And I began to think, with a gnome priest in the expansion, its going to be even worse. Every instance is going to become a fight for height. As blizz continues creating inclines in the game, gnomes are going to become horror stories in every instance. Even the old fights, like doing ubrs, constantly moving on inclines. Every time you get a gnome priest in your group, it will become common place for mages,rogues, shamans and whoever else can do interrupts to plan their first or 2nd attack to do that so the tank can pull the targets to level ground. It will become so common place for gnome priests to wipe groups because of line of sight that we will make can acronym for it, I am personally leaning towards kbg(killed by gnome). Maybe Dibs(done in by shorty) or h4tl(height for the loss).

Blizzard already doesn't give gnomes enough love( Ever been to black fathom deeps as a gnome, while your night elf friends run though the puddles and you have to swim) and now you will see the true fight of a gnomes existence, isn't killing bosses, but battling its disability, yeah I said it, every gnome battling your handicap, this post goes out to you.

So remember, in a few years when your group wipes to a gnome healer and you see, sorry DBM(death by midget), you will remember ole fuzz's prediction.

Profession gains as they result for a druid.

Leather working-Fur lining 90 stam, Obvious gear advance and pants enhancement.

Enchanting- Obvious all gear enhancement, 24 stam to ring each one. minus a big amount of money

Skinning- money and crtical strike

Engineering- Hours and hours of fun, but a money pit

Mining- 60 more stam

Herbing- 3.6k health regen over 5 seconds. slightly scales with health (ie druid with 37.4k health about 4200)


three thoughts for me here, If you dont need money, enchanting and leather working. Lots of stam in this method, and if your dual spec able to do alot of different things with them

If you need money, but want to have some fun, do skinn and leather first, get leather to 450 and go mining. with the bracer and base stam increase.

Lastly add herb in there, herb and whatever, I really like this method most of all, it goes against what alot of other tanks do, but I think with the new herbing slightly working with your health pool, it really favors druids, its like a health pot with a 3 min cool down thats unlimited.

Remember this is my complete opinion for whats best for a tank.

This is another tanking post on simplifying Druids job in a raid. Today's lesson, the flame watcher of VOA.

To start with I should put in you need a good geared healers and dps, around 3k ish

Burning Fury debuff (which increases damage taken by the entire raid by 5% and stacks another stack every 20 seconds.) This is the reasoning for the dps, requirements. You need to be able to kill em, before that debuff kills you.

I have found the best way to tank this is a slow circle around the giant hexagon. If healers are dying you might instruct them to up their particle density or stay kind of away from the middle area, Very hard to see the fire. This Requires 2 tanks but only one of you should be top on threat, other in 2nd.

Around the middle of the fight when the debuffs have been stacking majorly, its time to get your frenzied regen, lifeblood(herbing hot), barkskin

Use these during a spell called Meteor Fists. You and the other tank and whoever else is in front of the boss when this goes off is going to take alot, ALOT of damage. My group did it with myself and another bear, easy as hell on the healer. Ive heard with other tanks they need to put another class up there like a dk with frost up for a sec or something like that.

During the final say 5% or so of life, The tanks take alot of damage, when it happens be ready, at least with barkskin, and hope the healing is there.

Its a fairly easy tank and spank, just have to have the dps.