Looks like Premonition might have the world first kill on Ruby Sanctum 25-man heroic. Their tank Xav got the trinket, too. Nice bonus.
 I hope everyone knows about this not-so-obvious tooltip. It shows which bosses have been killed when you enter an existing raid ID. You put your mouse over the number of bosses killed, and a panel appears below which names them. You can take a screenshot (like I did), so that you don’t have to remember if you later need to repeat its status to other people. I have raided as a maintank and as an off-tank. I don’t really mind, as long as the encounter is interesting. Some people don’t like the term “off-tank” or think it’s out-of-date. Others don’t want to think of themselves as an off-tank because it implies you are of secondary importance. I like the term, because everyone knows it means “the tank who is not on or is the secondary tank for the big boss”.
 We’re chatting in my guild forums about killing the Lich King last night, and the question was asked how tough that fight is relative to others in WoW history. I haven’t killed every boss (didn’t do much Black Temple, for example, and no Sunwell at all, since my casual guild at the time was behind on progression). I answered the reason it’s a hard fight is because it’s a Type C in Tobold’s classification. To recap, saving you to June 11th, 2010 | One comment |
 From: Boss strategies |  Tags: leadership, lich king, performance, raid, raid leader, strategy  My guild, Axis of Dath’remar, a 10-man raiding guild of one night a week, tonight, finally killed the Lich King. I was so very happy about it. Axis is made up of a former hardcore guys who’ve now got the balance right, like four-day a week raiders in previous expansions. I must say our raid leader Dakas is superb, and this makes a big difference. He’s constantly calling ‘defile coming, away from middle’, or the reverse, making the decision June 11th, 2010 | 15 comments |
From: Raid leadership in general | Tags: leadership, lich king, raid, raid leader, strategy The Lich King. We were fairly close to killing him. I was travelling with work, in a hotel. I’d tested the ping from the room the previous day and on the day of the raid, and it was fine. The hotel internet was working reliably for 3.5 hours of the raid. Then in the final 30 minutes of the raid, the lag monster wtfpwned me. Like 2000 to 6000ms ping. It was heartbreaking. Unplayable. I couldn’t fix it. We Wake has written a great post on the question: what makes a great raider? What differentiates them from an average raider? This question follows neatly from yesterday’s post about looking for a new guild. Wake is in a top 100 EU guild. Here’s how it starts: The ability to react and adapt. All boss encounters rely on timed events coupled with some random elements. For the most part you can rely on a specific strategy to handle each situation May 19th, 2010 | Visit our forum to comment |
From: Playing better | Tags: hard mode, leadership, raid, situational awareness As the pre-expansion malaise thickens, as some guilds fold after killing or failing to kill the Lich King, as summer for the northern hemisphere ruins raiding attendance and as the environment and economy continue to get screwed-over by humans, oh and as volcanic dust continues to interrupt European trade and tourism… people are beginning to look for a new guild. I am not looking to change guild. In fact, I just told the guys of my commitment to my May 18th, 2010 | 3 comments |
From: Guild management | Tags: guild, leadership, progression, raid, rankings, recruitment, roster, situational awareness I have two tank specs, and most tanks who will never dps can do the same. It’s a nice situation. When I first joined my guild, on trial, I sometimes played as a dps before securing my spot in our tank corp. At another time in the past, I had a tank spec and pvp dps spec. This post is written for those tanks who can carry two tank specs. I’m not talking to those top 300 tanks who April 30th, 2010 | 5 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, General chat, choose spec | Tags: 5-man, blood, dual spec, frost, heroic, raid, spec, tank, unholy On the train this morning I read Everblue’s blog on the coming raid changes, and he pointed out a factor I hadn’t thought of yet: the varying healing requirements of 10 and 25 man. I quickly checked plusheal.com and wom, no comments there. Whilst Everblue’s a clever chap, surely one of the thousands of noisy bloggers has talked about this already? He points out that tanks will have the same stamina in 10 and 25 man raids, unlike now, April 28th, 2010 | 17 comments |
From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta | Tags: balance, healers, mmorpg design, raid, tank That is some heavy news, eh. Look how huge the response is. MMO-C had 1100 replies when I read the blue this morning, Australian time. At least 10 bloggers I have in my RSS reader already have posts. Here’s the pwnwear forum thread to discuss it, where I’ve put my thoughts, including that Strict 10 will become largely meaningless. April 27th, 2010 | Visit our forum to comment |
From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta | Tags: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, leadership, raid, raid leader Today I am absolutely delighted to have an interview with the GM of the world #1 (by achievement) strict 10 guild, Vox Immortalis. He’s also a Tauren warrior tank. Whilst he’s not a DK, at least he’s a Tauren, bonus points for that. Vox Immortalis also produce a lot of video content, and I’ve embedded two here and there are links to some others (such as when discussing their DK tank). In the interview we cover a lot of ground, including:
Regarding strict 10 rankings, there are a few #1 ranked guilds, depending on what you measure. That doesn’t diminish the awesome accomplishments of Vox Immortalis, nor the other top guilds From Chaos, Requiem of the Ebon Rose or Phoenicis. April 25th, 2010 | 11 comments |
From: Interviews | Tags: hard mode, hardcore, interview, leadership, mumble, raid, recruitment, strict 10 I wrote up a rant about Paranition, the first guild in the world to be sponsored by a deodorant. Stupid April Fools’ joke. Death Knights are particularly well suited to handling raid content by themselves, solo, alone, like a one-man army, because of the self-healing and extreme levels of awesomeness we DK tanks have osmotically imbued into our Blood talent tree. It’s been something many have tried. I solo’d most of ZG on my first Gravity, tried farming the cool mounts there for a while. It gets a bit dull after a while. One DK I know, Dywolf, has been doing it for a long while. Dywolf is a private chap, not one to talk about his achievements at all and a man who prefers short sentences. I asked if he could tell us what he’s done, how he does it and for any little tips for those who want to try solo raid content too. Here’s his story. PersistenceGravity: How long have you been into doing solo content? It started with soloing Onyxia on my pal in late TBC (still pre buff). Then I tried ZG cause I never stopped wanting those mounts (none have dropped for our guild, ever). So when I got my DK up to snuff, I started going for the ZG mounts again. And then I was bored with just those two fights, so I started working on clearing all the bosses. After getting Hakkar down, I set my eyes on the other 20m, AQ. Took a bit to get Ossirian down, even when we were raiding it we didnt often get him down. And then I realized how much money theese bosses were dropping….so I kept doing it. when they nerfed the cash, so I went back to just the 2 bosses for the mounts since I had the achievements. Then I turned into an achievement whore (up to 7200, including my Loremaster title), and saw someone post about soloing MC on dkinfo. His gear was far above mine, but I decided to try anyway, and learned very quickly that I still hate Gehennas. But with a bit of luck, and the shadow resist gear from Black Temple (royal pain to track down a BS with those recipes still) I proved he could be soloed….and then after the 3rd time I started bring a mage friend just to make it easier. Raggy turned out to be a pain too. My gear wasnt sufficient so I once again turned to TBC resist gear, and he went down shortly after. On that first run Garr dropped some bindings….and that started my quest for the legendaries. So to date I’ve solo cleared: ZG, AQ20, MC, Kara, all TBC heroics. Did AQ40 trash long enough to get the tank mounts, but Skeram is a toughy so I never went further in. BackgroundCould you provide a little background on yourself including armory link, and how seriously you raid in 10 or 25s. I like being low key so I’ll keep the armory to myself for now. I play a tauren dps DK and my name used to be funny til it got reported. Strangulate and a few others always seemed like Star Wars powers to me, so I went with that meme. Tradeskills are Alchemy and JC. I prefer frost spec still, specifically 2h frost, but Ghostcrawler says its never coming back, so I’ve made my peace with dw frost. Though there’s just something about a massive frosty cow DK with a big slow 2h that hits like a truck (old Frost strike). But Unholy is the way to go currently, and we need the debuff, so I raid that now. But I’ve been playing since vanilla beta. Coming from EQ and a ranger/beastlord character set made a hunter. Raided with it into BWL, but got bored with it, and leveled a enh shaman for TBC. Raided with that for a bit, then took a break, came back, switched to a ret pal in Black Temple (pre-super buffs). WOTLK came out, jumped on the DK bandwagon instantly. Been in the same guild, a fairly easy going but small one, since hunter days. We’re up to Putricide in the 10m group I’m in (couldnt tell ya where the other 10m is, but its farther along). In 25 we’ve got Saurfang, but thats it cause of the dps requirements for Fester (re: small guild). Trying to get a 2nd raid night going, but as it is our one night is the only free night for some of our people. ICC going slower for us cause we lost a couple people too. Hard bosses?Of those bosses, which were really tricky and what did you do to overcome them? March 30th, 2010 | Leave a comment |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically | Tags: aq20, aq40, interview, karazhan, kz, mc, molten core, raid, solo The guild I’m in, Axis, killed Blood Princes 10 last night. Last week, we got Putricide (I missed that one, had real-life stuff intercept me). We only raid once a week from 8pm til midnight. There’s a second raid night for alts. We don’t have a competitive stance in progression, which would be pretty silly for a raid guild of one night, yet are the most progressed in Icecrown amongst 10-man only Horde guilds on our little server. We’re March 5th, 2010 | 7 comments |
From: Raid leadership in general | Tags: blood princes, leadership, raid, strategy Blood Legion, on their Lich King kill announcement, said: We’d like to mention that this kill wouldn’t have been possible without the near-zero latency voice chat of a newly-discovered Ventrillo alternative that we just started using, called Mumble. We encourage players to try out this new software! That’s a very high accolade. It’s not an off-hand comment. I hadn’t even heard of Mumble. It’s an open source, very low latency voice comms system. Here’s their home page. It’s been February 7th, 2010 | 10 comments |
From: Observe, orient, decide, act | Tags: leadership, raid, teamspeak, ventrilo, voice I have mentioned this great addon once before, Boss Notes (back in Sept 09). Those guilds going up against Putricide you might find it helpful. Saves alt-tabbing to whichever website you use. It can learn boss’ abilities (make sure you turn this on; it’s off by default). This gives you their spells (with tooltips), in a handy notebook, into which you can also write your own tips and reminders. Includes simple written strategies for all the older bosses, too, January 7th, 2010 | 2 comments |
From: Addons | Tags: addon, boss notes, heroics, raid, raid leader, review, strategy Blizzard have given a unequivocal statement that Frost is designed for dual-wielding. That two-handed Frost will not, and is not intended to, give the same DPS (for raiding) as dual-wield will. In tanking, it’s the same: you get higher TPS in dual-wield. Just remember, you should have more expertise to tank dual-wield than two-handed. What’s refreshing is a black and white statement about their design intent, from blue poster Zarhym. Q u o t e: Just curious….are we ever December 26th, 2009 | 18 comments |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically | Tags: 3.3, blizzard, dps, dual wield, dw, frost, raid, tank, tps For raids, I’d go with blood or frost. Here are my posts with much more detail. Patch Blood Frost Unholy 3.33 blood 3.3 Gravity’s Grid of Blood specs 3.3.3 Interactive talent tree to explain each talent Frost 3.3 spec here or dual-wield Unholy tanking 3.3 March 23, 2010 update: 3.33 does not change your spec much, if at all. Read my full analysis, or visit the forums to see what others have to say. Unholy should not be used December 9th, 2009 | 15 comments - (Visit our forum to comment) |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: 3.3, best, blood, frost, raid, spec, tank, unholy Blood remains the best single-target raid tank spec. April 8th, 2010: I have just posted a grid showing the specs against dimensions of threat, survival and utility. You may find it an easier way to choose a spec or understand them. Patch 3.3.3 buffed WotN, and also Dancing Rune Weapon now gives threat, so consider dropping 1 from Necrosis and move it to DRW. This is a raid-tanking damage talent, not so useful for 5-mans. Raid specMain raid spec: Blood 54-8-10
There are so many possible and valid variations on a Blood maintank spec, I thought it’d be useful for me to outline a few additional specs. Choosing a blood spec can give you an anxiety disorder. April 2010: I put a grid together across survival and threat, putting specs into it for context, see Gravity’s Grid. December 9th, 2009 | 32 comments - (Visit our forum to comment) |
From: Death Knight tanking specifically, choose spec | Tags: 3.3, blood, heroic, raid, spec, tank, threat To close this series of posts on balance, I wanted to use a few diagrams to outline the problem. This will be my last post on this topic for a while (in case you’re losing interest in it). (As an aside, I’m going to do my bit to improve the quality of tanking in the world, too. We’ll publish more how-to articles and guides in the future, and you’ll see the site navigation is already changing to accommodate that content). I also want to highlight that most tanks just want to tank: switching between dps and tank specs works technically, but quite often (not always), tanks want to stick to the one mode of thinking. You get into a ‘tank zone’ mentally, and it’s better to stay in that zone than flick out to dps. Sure you can do it, sure it’s not hard, but it’s not fun for most tanks. So to illustrate the ratio question, if you look at it in terms of a realm population, how many tanks are there available and willing to tank at any time? I expect the cross-realm LFG system will really help PUGs, but not guild-raids. I think casual raid guilds pay a bigger penalty from the varying ratios needed in a raid than a hardcore guild. Casuals don’t like to bench, don’t tend to stack raids (by swapping people in and out during the raid), and so the inconsistency of a minimum tank number makes it tougher to try settling on a ‘right sized’ number of tanks within the guild. Anyhow, here’s the illustrative diagram. The essential problem is the difference between the ratios across raiding, 5-mans and the actual characters on the realm.
The number of tanks is a function of supply and demand The other issue I wanted to close on is that the tank situation we’ve talked about has at least a supply and demand side to its equation. November 23rd, 2009 | 2 comments |
From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, Tanking in general | Tags: balance, Cataclysm speculation before Beta, comparison, pve, raid, tank Yesterdays post asking ‘whether DKs are being benched’ appears to have two root causes:
If you haven’t looked over the discussion, it’s a good read; and Honor’s comment could have been a post in its own right. Encounters which favour one tank over anotherDKs did have their time in the limelight with Sarth3D, where the (now defunct) Unholy-Vot3W spec reigned supreme. That spec has been ‘balanced’ away to obscure memory, so it doesn’t work anymore, but looked a bit like this. Block-tanks have theirs on Anub. I’d forgotten about Vezax, but Honors hadn’t and nor had Ghostcrawler. November 19th, 2009 | 13 comments |
From: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, Raid leadership in general | Tags: Cataclysm speculation before Beta, mmorpg design, raid, tank I hear anecdotal evidence of DK tanks being benched so that our tanking brethren do the business instead. Whilst promoting the rawr:tankDK article in official wow forums, I read a thread there asking “where did all the DK tanks go?” (being the official forums I would normally immediately disregard everything as drivel)… but remembered long-time reader Kenshi commenting he’s now 3rd tank (he’s in a progression guild). He’d shown a picture from guildies too. They’d read the “warriors are swiss army, DKs are from lego” November 18th, 2009 | 32 comments |
From: Tanking in general | Tags: comparison, pve, raid, roster, rotation, tank I really paused for thought after reading Tobold’s classification of raid encounters. Looking at the title of his post, ‘raid encounter classification’, you might well think his answers would describe the mechanics of a fight like this:
I used Naxx examples so everyone can relate to it. But in fact, what’s so clever, is he looks instead at where the pressure is placed, and who needs September 25th, 2009 | 3 comments |
From: Raid leadership in general | Tags: hard mode, heroics, leadership, performance, raid, raid leader, strategy I like this addon, Boss Notes. Gives you an in-game notebook for each boss. Comes with dot-point reminders of the key things for Ulduar bosses, for example, and you can enter your own. These can be broadcast to a channel you choose.
Another example of what a warlock might put in a personal note for a boss:
It also knows and learns the abilities that boss’ cast, so you build up a reference September 14th, 2009 | One comment |
From: Addons | Tags: addon, heroics, raid, raid leader, review, strategy |
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