Welcome to the first edition of Wipe Insurance, Waranvil.com’s new raiding column. This will be posted every monday, so make sure you come back every week for new strategies, tips and tricks! This week we are going to discuss when you are ready to raid. So you’ve just dinged 80 and all you’ve heard about since level 5 is endgame raiding – many people will tell you its where the real game is, you level up and may even do some raids at your level along the way. But entering the current endgame raiding is different. Theres tiers, caps, stat weights, enrage timers, gearscore, jerks, death knights in full tier 9 doing 2k dps (Theres a lot of them…), casual, hardcore, no-lifers, hard modes…its enough to make your head spin.

What should you run?

The number one thing I can recommend to people who want to start raiding is to know your limits.
The way blizzard tunes instances (Gearwise anyway) is so that it is just hard enough for people wearing gear from the last tier of content (and assuming a reasonable amount of skill). The problem with this is…people want the newest gear and freshly dinged 80’s want to run ICC. If you get into that ICC 10 group in your Naxx 10 or Uld 10 gear, there is a very (very) good chance you will not be up to the minimum requirements for that instance. This, boys and girls, is a carried player. Being carried will not get you invited back to runs, and it will most likely put you on a few players ignore lists, hurting your future raiding attempts – even after  you have the gear to pull your weight. Stay in your bracket and get gear, it doesn’t take long to move up the ladder.

Disclaimer: The badge leap

When WotLK first came out, there were 2 badge types you could get: Heroism and Valor. You got heroism from running heroics, and the 10 man tier 7 raids. The gear you got from badges was on par with running the raid content. These days, you can get a full set of tier 9, and its 25 man counterparts (245 gear) just from chain-running heroics. Thats great, its a great way to gear up -  but I still suggest doing the tier 7/tier 8 raids before jumping straight into ToC or ICC, they give excellent experience in your class and in raiding techniques. Below are the raid tiers and a dps mark of where you should be to do them. These are numbers are based on the way the encountered are tuned and failure to meet them may lead to your raid having difficulty. Think of it this way – if you dont meet the minimum, everyone else in the raid has to work harder to make sure it succeeds.

Tier 7

• Tier 7 is the entry level raiding tier in wrath – as such, the gear requirements are lax and you can pretty much jump into these raids with heroic gear.
• This tier comprises of Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and The Eye of Eternity. To run tier 7, you can pretty much be a fresh 80. A few heroic drops, some level 200 craftables – your good to go. The main purpose for these raids is to wet your feet in raiding, give you a taste of its glory. By the time you have completed these raids and gotten a few pieces – you will be ready for the 25 man version of tier 7 and the 10 man Tier 8 stuff.
  • Fasttrack: The ToC 5 man dungeon will drop Naxx 10 level gear in normal mode and Ulduar 10 in normal. The ICC 5 man dungeons also drop Ulduar 10 level gear on normal. These are a great way to get gear without raiding the tier 7 stuff.
  • DPS Mark: 1.5-2.5k

Tier 8

• Tier 8 is comprised of the Ulduar raid, which is an amazingly well done raid that most players these days will never do. The prerequisites for this tier are gear from Tier 7 or higher.
  • Fasttrack: The ICC 5 man dungeons drop ToC 10 level gear on heroic. If you are in mostly Tier 7 or ToC 5H/ICC 5N gear these heroics are manageable and an excellent way to gear up.
  • DPS Mark: 2.5-3.5k

Tier 9

• Tier 9 is comprised of Trial of the Champion , which gets a real bad rep, and Onyxia’s Lair 2.0 (Which is easy if you understand the basics of movement) . Once you have farmed tier 8 or heroics, this will probably be where most of your upgrades are. As I said before, I highly suggest you do the previous tier raids before this. There is not a whole lot of room for error in these fights – you need to know how to play your class, what your utility is and how not to stand in the fire/slime/cloud.
  • DPS Mark: 3.5-5.5k

Tier 10

• Tier 10 is the final tier of raiding in Wrath, and is comprised of Icecrown Citadel and the soon to be released Ruby Sanctum.|
  Icecrown Citadel is the culmination of all that  you have done in wrath, and the fights are great – but some of them come with serious gear and skill checks.
  • DPS Mark: 5.5k-7.5k

With the badge changes in this expansion, it will be easy to get geared in a matter of time, but until you meet the gear requirements – try to resist the urge to go into runs you are not ready for. Now, I am a firm believer that skill heavily outweighs gear, and that a 200 piece can be better itemized than a 219, it happens. This brings me to my next point.

Know your class.

I know you know your class, but do you really know your class? Do you know what buffs you bring to the table? Is your spec giving you the best tools you need to do your job? Are you stacking stats that give you more of what you need to do your job?

Ok, I’m probably going to catch some flack for the numbers above, but if you are in a gear setup that the instance is tuned for (see above), you should not have problems meeting these numbers. If you are in all ToC 10 and 25 gear and can just barely hit 3k, ask yourself – “Do I really know my class?”. Blizzard tunes the enrage timers and add health around what they expect (from lots of data gathering) players wearing a certain gear setup to put out.

If you happen to be a tank, here are some numbers that are good checkpoints to START tanking a specific raid.Keep in mind these numbers are unbuffed. As you can see, health requirements scale up significantly, this is due to bosses progressively hitting harder as you go up in tier.

Minium Tank Requirements per instance: (ALWAYS at least 540 defense.)

• Heroics/Naxx 10: 20-23k health, 20-30% avoidance, 20-23k armor.
• Naxx 25/Ulduar 10: 23-25k health,30-40% avoidance, 22-25k armor.
• Ulduar 25/ToC 10: 27-29k health, 40-50% avoidance, 25-27k armor.
• ToC 25: 33-35k health, 45-50% avoidance, 27-28k armor.
• ICC 10: 35-38k health, 45-55% avoidance, 29-30k armor.
• ICC 25: 39-44k health, 50%+ Avoidance, 30k+ armor. (The icecrown numbers reflect the current 20% buff).

Be prepared.

There are mountains of information out there regarding raids, bosses and abilities. Videos, if you like to watch – text guides otherwise! Its all out there, It will even be here in this column. Theres no excuse for going into a run dry – if you have at least a passing familiarity of what the encounter is like, it will go a little smoother when you attempt it. Also, if this is content that is challenging for you (or geared towards you) be prepared with consumables. Bring your own flasks, pots, elixirs and food. Most groups will provide fish feasts, but is that the best food buff you can get? Always try to do your best.

Ok,I’m Ready! I got my flasks, know my class, and studied the encounters!

Great! Come back next week when we discuss the art of being a good pug, and until then happy raiding!

What’s got me thinking though, is wondering how deep the class changes are going to go. Blizzard have given a few hints and tips about what’s going to happen, but at this stage most of it is meaningless noise. That doesn’t stop us from being able to speculate and hope though, right? That’s what these guys were doing after a jaunt through Karazhan the other day:

A change that I’ve found interesting is the decision to make Tree of Life a cooldown, as opposed to a permanent form change for Druids. I only ever got into the early 30s with my Druid, but the defining feature of our nature loving friends is that they are capable of changing their form at will to augment and improve the abilities of their chosen spec. A Druid that stays in caster form… I don’t really know how to approach that idea. On the one hand, Tree of Life is currently a flat buff that happens to change the way you look, but then again so is Moonkin form and Shadowform. As yet, we’ve no suggestion that those forms are going to be altered in any way. Tree of Life will be something to keep an eye out on, I think. It’ll be… interesting, to see how that works out.

Warriors are getting their Rage normalised come Cataclysm, which sounds like a good idea on paper but I suspect will take a lot of tweaking come the time. At the moment my experience of Warriors in dungeons seems revolve around an equal split of them either having so much rage they don’t know what to do with it or so little that they either can’t keep aggro or can’t do enough DPS to stay on the meters at all. Normalising that vital component is going to take some work.

Death Knights… well, I don’t know how much change they’ll see. We already know that Blood is going to be the tanking tree, Frost the dual wield tree, and Unholy the 2hand DPS tree… so, basically it’s going to be how it is at end game now pretty much. Sounds like a big change, but really most of the ground work has already been done by the players. I’m intend to enjoy the last hurrah of Unholy tanking as I level my Death Knight, but I won’t be gutted when Blood becomes THE tree for that. As long as Unholy keeps the permanent Ghoul, I’m happy.

Now… a class close to my heart. The Paladin. I rolled mine well after they became popular. I started healing just after Holy got nerfed. I tanked before Ardent Defender got fixed. I even played Retribution, despite my deep dislike of DPSing. Whatever they do to Paladins, it can’t be enough. Despite my love my tankadin, Paladins are… boring. That’s it. They are boring. As Retribution, you get a choice 5 buttons to press. The way you decide which of these to press is simple. You press whichever button is linked to the ability which isn’t on cooldown. It’s mind numbing. As a tank, you start your 6969 rotation, and once you’ve started, you’re locked into it until either you or the mobs you’ve attacked are dead. Boring. As Holy, you cast Beacon of Light, maybe Judgement of Wisdom, and the Flash of Light, pretty much for the same duration as the tank does his rotation, i.e. until either you or the group of mobs are dead. BORING.

Whatever happens, I hope Blizzard do something to mix up the Paladin class a bit. It’s referred to as a face roll class, and as one of it’s staunchest supporters, I can honestly see why. It’s just so… BORING! The new cooldowns and abilities that are being added should be interesting, and provide a bit more in terms of choice and rotation for all 3 specs, but it’s going to take more than a few new shiny spells to make the class less dull and listless.

Part 2 will be up later in the week, after I’ve found things to moan about with my Priest and Shaman.

Hey all, its patch day again!

Now before you go running screaming into the night and threatening to cancel your account, lets note that its just a minor patch – but it brings some nice changes.

Big General Changes:

• The long awaited equipment manager has made it live.
• Gear now scales SotA and Wintergrasp vehicles.
• Wintergrasp quests are now weekly instead of daily.

A few class tweaks and bug fixes in the full notes included after the jump.

General

• When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

• Equipment Manager
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).
• Copied Test Realm characters will no longer be copied with their achievement history in order to better facilitate the character copy process.

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Lake Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Lake Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike: This talent now also increases the healing from Death Strike by 25/50% and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect the actual functionality after the hotfix in 3.1.0.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Now has a 10-second cooldown.

Druids

• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Hunters

Mages

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.

Paladins

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

Warlocks

• Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame. In addition, the increased critical strike chance of Conflagrate provided by this talent no longer requires the Immolate effect to have 5 seconds or fewer remaining on the target.
• Fire and Brimstone: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 3/6/9/12/15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 5/10/15/20/25%.
• Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
• Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker’s health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
  Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
  Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.
• Arena weapons with an item level of 239 have had their rating requirements increased to 2350.
• Darkruned Battlegear 2-Piece Set Bonus: The bonus critical strike chance for Frost Strike and Death Coil has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Furious Gladiator’s Staff and Furious Gladiator’s Greatstaff: The agility values on these two items were too high. They have been reduced by 50%.
• Glyphs
• Guise of the Midgard Serpent: The base attack power on this item has been lowered to balance it against items of a similar quality.
• Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied.
• Nightsong Garb 4-Piece Set Bonus: Chance for Insect Swarm to trigger an instant Starfire changed to 15%.
• Scourgeborne Battlegear 4-Piece Set Bonus: The runic power gain has been reduced to 5 runic power from 10 runic power.
• Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions

• Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest.
  Phantom Ghostfish: Can now be caught from Nettlefish schools in Sholazar Basin.

User Interface

• For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum.

Bug Fixes

• Anti-magic Shell: Tooltip error corrected.
• Blood Boil: If no target is available for Blood Boil to hit, the spell will now cast and consume a blood rune but generate no runic power.

• Maim: Rank 2 of this ability is properly considered a stun and can be escaped by Blink.

• Go For The Throat: Explosive Shot critical strikes now trigger this talent.
• Lock and Load: The tooltip has been corrected to display its actual chance to occur.
• Rabid: This Hunter pet talent no longer lists a percentage chance to be triggered, as that chance varies by the attack speed of the pet.

• Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.

• Shadow Dance: Issues with action bars and ability use arising from using Stealth while Shadow Dance is active have been fixed.
• Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets.

• Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock’s spellbook.

• Swordguard Embroidery: Now correctly increases ranged attack power.
• Tailoring

• Ulduar
  • Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
  • 10-player bosses that drop Runed Orbs will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
  • The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.

I don’t know about you folks, but I’m pretty excited about 3.1. Granted, since I’ve rerolled Priest and am only at level 70, I can’t take advantage of the new raid (although I might break out my Paladin for a sneak peak), but one thing I can take advantage of is the swathe of changes that have been made to my class, and of course the other classes. As we’ve said, Grim has also rerolled, bringing in his Mage, ditching his obsession with tanking for an obsession with massive numbers. He’s even gone so far as to respec Fire for levelling. Last night we were hacking up some corpses, and discussing the changes in 3.1, and the subject of Glyphs came up. I was complaining as usual about the lack of Discipline glyphs when Grim reminded me that we have a swathe of new glyphs arriving. So, filled with enthusiasm I headed onto Google and got looking for the glyphic goodness that would arrive with 3.1.

Read on after the break to see what we’re getting!

First up, Glyphs:

Death Knight

• Glyph of Hungering Cold – Reduces the cost of Hungering Cold by 10 runic power.
• Glyph of Unholy Blight – Increases the duration of Unholy Blight by 10 sec.
• Glyph of Death Coil – Reduces the cost of Death Coil by 8 runic power.
• Glyph of Pestilence – Your Pestilence ability now refreshes disease durations on your primary target back to their maximum duration.
• Glyph of Howling Blast – Your Howling Blast ability now infects your targets with Frost Fever.

Now that is what I’m talking about.  Cost reductions aren’t really anything special, but the Glyphs of Pestilence, Howling Blast, and Unholy Blight are incredible. Unholy Blight can be devastating when used correctly, and the added duration makes it even more viable. Howling Blast infecting targets with Frost Fever is really good as well. Widespread plagues, anyone? In a similar vein, Pestilence will be excellent for keeping your main target in the hurt locker.

Druid

• Glyph of Berserk - Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 sec.
• Glyph of Wild Growth – Wild Growth now affects up to 6 targets.
• Glyph of Nourish – Your Nourish heals an additional 6% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.
• Glyph of Savage Roar – Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 6% bonus damage done.
• Glyph of Typhoon – Reduces the cooldown of your Typhoon spell by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Barkskin – Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 1 to 0% while Barkskin is active.

Ah. Now here we have a problem. My knowledge of the Druid extends to the fact that they have 4 year old models. Still, from my limited experience, Savage Roar has been given a significant buff with that Glyph, as has Wild Growth. In fact, it seems Druids have been given some pretty good options. There’s a distinct lack of “reduces cooldown” rubbish.

Hunter

• Glyph of Chimera Shot - Reduces the cooldown of Chimera Shot by 1 sec.
• Glyph of Explosive Shot - Increases the critical strike chance of Explosive Shot by 4%.
• Glyph of Kill Shot – Reduces the cooldown of Kill Shot by 6 sec.
• Glyph of Explosive Trap - The periodic damage from your Explosive Trap can now be critical strikes.
• Glyph of Scatter Shot - Increases the range of Scatter Shot by 3 yards.
• Glyph of Raptor Strike - For 5 sec. after using Raptor Strike, you take 20% less damage.

The Glyphs of Explosive Shot and Trap should be a cause for happiness to all Survival Hunters everywhere. Raptor Strike looks pretty good, damage reduction is always welcome in PvP. Not too bad for those “Oh sh*t” PvE moments either.

Mage

• Glyph of Deep Freeze - Increases the range of Deep Freeze by 10 yards.
• Glyph of Living Bomb – The periodic damage from your Living Bomb can now be critical strikes.
• Glyph of Arcane Barrage – Reduces the mana cost of Arcane Barrage by 20%.
• Glyph of Mirror Image - Your Mirror Images gain the Winter’s Chill talent, granting their Frostbolt spell a 100% chance to apply the Winter’s Chill effect, which increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 1% for 15 sec.  Stacks up to 5 times.
• Glyph of Ice Barrier – Increases the amount of damage absorbed by your Ice Barrier by 30%.

Well, I know Grim will be happy about the glyph of Living Bomb! Ice Barrier stands to be a very powerful survival tool with that extra 30% of absorbtion. Mirror Image looks to be even more devastating with the ability to increase crit chance on the target as well.

Paladin

• Glyph of Beacon of Light - Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.
• Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous - Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.
• Glyph of Divine Storm – Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it causes.
• Glyph of Shield of Righteousness - Reduces the mana cost of Shield of Righteousness by 1 to 6%.
• Glyph of Divine Plea - While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.
• Glyph of Holy Shock – Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec.
• Glyph of Hand of Salvation – When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.

Well… this is nice then. Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of Righteousness, Divine Plea and Hand of Salvation all seem to have become a Protection Paladins dream. Extra mana conservation, reduced damage taken and an extra target for the Hammer? Incredible. Holy Shock is a bit meh, but Divine Storm is even better with this new Glyph.

Priest

• Glyph of Guardian Spirit – If your Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.
• Glyph of Penance – Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.
• Glyph of Mind Sear – Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.
• Glyph of Hymn of Hope – Your Hymn of hope provides 3 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.
• Glyph of Pain Suppression – Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

Good lord. That Guardian Spirit glyph is out of this world. Makes we want to spec Holy just so I can use it. Glyph of Penance, while only being a cooldown reduction is pretty nice since it’s the main Discipline heal. Hymn of Hope I’m not sure about, but time will tell. Pain Suppression is excellent.

Rogue

• Glyph of Killing Spree – Reduces the cooldown on Killing Spree by 45 sec.
• Glyph of Shadow Dance – Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 4 sec.
• Glyph of Fan of Knives – Increases the damage done by Fan of Knives by 20%.
• Glyph of Tricks of the Trade – Your Tricks of the Trade grants an additional 10% bonus damage to your target.
• Glyph of Mutilate – Reduces the cost of Mutilate by 5 energy.
• Glyph of Cloak of Shadows – While Cloak of Shadows is active, you take 40% less physical damage.

Killing Spree looks good. That’s a very significant amount of time to have taken off the cooldown. Shadow Dance is excellent, as is Fan of Knives. Cloak of Shadows is incredible, and will end up being nerfed in short order.

Shaman

• Glyph of Thunderstorm – Reduces the cooldown on Thunderstorm by 7 sec.
• Glyph of Feral Spirit – Your spirit wolves gain an additional 30% of your attack power.
• Glyph of Riptide – Increases the duration of Riptide by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Earth Shield – Increases the amount healed by your Earth Shield by 20%.
• Glyph of Totem of Wrath - When you cast Totem of Wrath, you gain 30% of the totem’s bonus spell power for .
• Glyph of Hex – Increases the damage your Hex target can take before the Hex effect is removed by 20%.
• Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem – Your Stoneclaw Totem also places a damage absorb shield on you, equal to 4 times the strength of the shield it places on your totems.

Glyph of Feral Spirit is awesome. So is Earth Shield. And Riptide. And Hex. In fact, there is not a single new Shaman glyph that doesn’t impress me. Thunderstorm is a little dull, but hey it all helps with the mana regen doesn’t it?

Warlock

• Glyph of Haunt – The bonus damage granted by your Haunt spell is increased by an additional 3%.
• Glyph of Metamorphosis - Increases the duration of your Metamorphosis by 6 sec.
• Glyph of Chaos Bolt – Reduces the cooldown on Chaos Bolt by 2 sec.
• Glyph of Demonic Circle – Reduces the cooldown on Demonic Circle by 0.4 sec.
• Glyph of Shadowflame – Your Shadowflame also applies a 70% movement speed slow on its victims.
• Glyph of Soul Link - Increases the percentage of damage shared via your Soul Link by an additional 5%.
• Glyph of Life Tap – When you use Life Tap, you gain 20% of your spirit as spell power for 20 sec.

I’ve always been underwhelmed by Metamorphosis. Does this make it any better? I don’t know. The whole ability seems rather lacklustre in my opinion. The movement slow on Shadowflame looks good, and Life Tap looks good as well.

Warrior

• Glyph of Bladestorm – Reduces the cooldown on Bladestorm by 15 sec.
• Glyph of Shockwave – Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 sec.
• Glyph of Vigilance – Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.
• Glyph of Enraged Regeneration – Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
• Glyph of Spell Reflection - Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 sec.
• Glyph of Shield Wall - Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.

Three cooldown reductions? Not brilliant… but Bladestorm is a great ability, so being able to cast it more often is never a bad thing. Same goes for Shockwave. The reduction of Spell Reflection is negligable really. Vigilance was good enough before, and now it’ll be even better. Enraged Regeneration is even more ridiculous, and looks even better for this glyph.

I’ll admit it, I’ve never played an arena match ever!  I know this is quite shocking to most people reading this, but the simple fact of the matter was, I simply was not interested in PvP.  For a long time I had been a stern die hard PvE player.  My reasons behind this stem from a lot of my past experiences.  I played eq2 for a few years at the highest level of raiding, admittedly I’ve not played wow at that same level, but I still know all the dungeons inside out.  I’ve always tanked too.  Sure I’ve had alts which I’ve messed with and in some cases I’ve even claimed to be changing my main over to them.  In the end I always come rolling back to Grim and his Warrior buddies to tank yet another instance!

But what if I look at this from a totally new perspectiveve?  What if I simply strip all my characters of everything they own and send it all to one of my alts and make him my full time main no questions asked?

I want to get into competitive PvP as its the last thing left for me in WoW, so to speak.  These are my alts:

• 70 Paladin
• 65 Warlock
• 54 Mage

The rest range from level 1-10 so are not really worth mentioning, oh and I forgot the obligatory Death Knight.

I went with the Mage I’ll discuss why are the split.

I play WoW with Kir on his many characters, 99% of the time I log in when hes logging in.  So the selection of which character to play sort of depended on the level of character he wished to play.  Luckily enough he has a priest of level 55, which he is extremely interested in.  Given Priest, Rogue and Mage seems to be one of the best arena combos it all started to make sense!  Also I have a very soft spot for my Mage and I’d love to learn the class inside out.

And so our Mage and Priest are looking forward to leveling up!  Given the amount of times we have gone through Azeroth and Outland we should be in Northrend in no time.  I plan on updating our progress as often as possible.

Currently we are just finishing off Western Plague lands and are looking forward to moving to Eastern Plague lands.  From there we should be able to make 57 in a few hours of playtime, then we can move to Outland! Yay!

The only doubts I have at the moment are my seemingly unbreakable attachment to tank classes, and classes which hit stuff up close and personal.  I guess its just the type of player I am.  Still I’m very interested in having dps at my fingertips for the first time ever (at a high level).  As I said at the top of this article, the main goal for my Mage is to go full on PvP.  The days are long gone when I could sit at the computer for hours and hours on end waiting for instance groups and the like.  Now I’m after the instant satisfaction PvP brings.  I can’t put into words how excited I am about this whole affair!

See ya next time

Grim, er I mean Icecomet! (what a sexy name)

Glyphs, glyphs and more glyphs!

It can be a daunting task wading through all the glyphs available on the auction house.  So out of the kindness of my own tanking heart I’ve decided to compile a glyph guide!  We will look at all the possible Warrior class glyphs that relate to tanking (stuff the dps ones, were here to tank baby).  Each glyph will be broken down and explained, we’ll look at the best combinations and must have glyphs.

In themselves glyphs can look ‘minor’ yet they have a profound impact on how well your Warrior will perform.

Lets continue inside my office, after the break!

First off lets list all the glyphs.

Major

• Glyph of Blocking
• Glyph of Revenge
• Glyph of Heroic Strike
• Glyph of Resonating Power
• Glyph of Cleaving
• Glyph of Rapid Charge
• Glyph of Devastate
• Glyph of Last Stand
• Glyph of Sunder Armor

Minor

• Glyph of Battle
• Glyph of Bloodrage
• Glyph of Charge
• Glyph of Thunder clap

These are the only glyphs worth speaking about when it comes to Prot spec.  Lets look at what the best Heroic tanking and above, glyph builds would contain.

Ok, we have 3 major and 3 minor glyphs to work with (level 80).

Glyph of Blocking

This is a must have, I would include this in any type of Protection build.

So a Heroic tanking and above build could look something like this:

Major

• Glyph of Blocking
• Glyph of Resonating Power
• Glyph of Sunder Armor

Minor

• Glyph of Bloodrage
• Glyph of Charge
• Glyph of Thunder clap

This is what I would consider to be the best threat glyph build along with mitigation.  However changes can be made here, for example you might want to work in Glyph of Cleaving or Glyph of Devastate

For Protection grinding, getting those quests done or grinding mob drops then something like this will work wonders:

Major

• Glyph of Rapid Charge
• Glyph of Revenge
• Glyph of Devastate

Minor

• Glyph of Bloodrage
• Glyph of Charge
• Glyph of Battle

This set should work wonder for dropping mobs a lot faster.  With the 100% rage reduction on Heroic Strike after landing a Revenge you can’t go wrong.  Then throw in some increased Charge refresh rate…you can see what I’m getting at here.  I think that’s the best build for sheer dps Protection mode when solo.  Again if your looking for a AoE dps spec then throw in some Glyph of Cleaving along with Glyph of Resonating Power on the Major side.  Then you could drop in Glyph of Thunder clap when it comes to the Minor side of things.

As with everything you can chop and change based on the situation your in, there’s no definitive ‘best’ build when it comes to glyphs.  But I hope this little list and explanation will help!

First of all please accept my apologies for the lack of posts over the last few days.  I’ve been way to busy playing WoW to actually write about it.  However I want to speak about my experiences in heroic dungeons.

Think of this as one Orcs mission to become Heroic crit immune!  I’ll speak about a few instances in particular but mostly I’ll focus on my own individual ride to gear up.

After the break.

I can’t remember the exact stats I hit level 80 with, but with some AH buying I gained a decent amount of defense/armor/hp to be going on with.  Now as you know me and Kirioth play together pretty much exclusively which means we are prone to doing stupid crap!  We decided to junk normal instances altogether and jump directly into heroic dungeons.

I was not crit immune, in fact my def was below 490!  As I say, I can’t remember the exact amount I had, but it was low, way to low.  This hardly made any difference to us though….’gamble and win’ is what we say!

Hang on a sec, lets look at the ‘recommended’ stats for a Heroic Warrior tank.

Defense

First of all lets speak about defense, this is taken from TankSpot (one awesome tanking resourse site)

540 Defense Skill is the necessary minimum for entering 10-man and 25-man raiding content. At this point, we consider our characters to be “uncrittable” by most mobs, and we can begin to focus on other stats. Please note that, when handling Heroic 5-man instances, you will only need 535.

So for heroics we want this magical number 535.  Why is this lower than 10-25 man content? It relates to mob level, mobs are lower level in Heroic dungeons when compared to raid instances.  To make 540 def for raid content you need to get together a total of 689 defense rating on your items.  Its a lot harder to get your defense capped for Heroics this time around in WoW, instead of me linking god knows how many items I’ll refer you again toTankSpot for Cider’s Easy 540 Defense Gear Guide

Health Points

There are a lot of people out there who will tell you what you need for this stat.  Take it from me you only need 20k to start with.  You should be very close to this figure after completing the grind to level 80, however you can still raid the AH for the last few items you need to bring you hp up to the 20k standard, these items being:

Waistguard of the Risen Knight Drak’Tharon Keep random zone drop

Tattered Castle Drape Utgarde Keep random drop

Crusaders Square Pauldrons Culling of Stratholme random drop

You need to basically look for items with high hp/defense on them.

Armor

Again going from personal experience (which is always best right? ) I say your looking at 19-20k here to get started with.  With good AH buying along with completing the right quests and taking the best tank rewards you should be close if not over this amount.  If for some reason your not at this amount but are very close, then don’t worry you should be ok.

So going back to me and Kirioth.  I do not for one moment condone going into Heroic dungeons under geared as the tank, that’s just stupid.  But with Kiri backing me up (the world class healer he is) we could afford to take the gamble!  We completed the Culling of Stratholme, both Utgarde instances and The Nexus before I eventually went over the defense cap.  It was by no means easy, in fact it was damn hard.  Shield Wall , Enraged Regeneration and Last Stand became very close friends indeed!

For hit rating see:

Kusasi Hit Rating Guide (look for the melee hit link)

I hope this post helps all my Warrior homies out there, its a basic guide of baseline stats, not including dodge parry etc….But as I say this is more than enough to start your Heroic tanking career.

God bless and good luck fellow tanks.

Remember hitting level 70 back in TBC? I do, very well in fact.  During my trek to max level I basically tanked most of the normal and a handful of Heroic dungeons and that was it.  This is not to say I lack tanking experience, as you will see from my short bio on the team page I’m very experienced in the tanking roll within MMORPG’s.  Yeah I did level almost entirely as Prot spec even back then, since at the time I was playing with Kirioth on his rogue. (makes sense, tank and a DPS machine we kinda thought).

So I hit the 70 and start to tank instances to get the gear needed for Heroic Dungeon runs…

…All is going fine, tanking the standard dungeons seemed to be fairly easy, although the lack of pure AOE tanking ability made the task highly intensive when having to control aggro on groups of 4+ mobs.  If people pulled aggro, which they do almost all the time in PUGS (pick up groups or none guild groups basically) I could snap the aggro back in time easily before the corpsed it.  But this did get very old, very fast people would be pulling aggro all the time, ignoring the marks and all that jazz.

Then we move onto Heroic dungeons, dear God.

The same crap with people attacking the wrong targets translated over to Heroic dungeons.  With them being Heroic this kinda meant people not designed to take damage would last a matter of seconds upon pulling aggro, which they would do all the time.

First one we attempted, Hellfire Ramparts. Never made it past the first groups of mobs which is a dire performance in anyone’s eyes.  Players left the group after pulling aggro and getting killed etc, blame the tanks and healers situation.  This pattern continued over most dungeons, but Magisters Terrace proved to be quite different indeed.  You know why that was? Simply because we would take so much CC (crowd control) in to lock down the adds I’d only be tanking 1 or 2 mobs max at any given time hehe.

Grimhammer was basically put on hold then, but I did use him to tank bosses in Karazhan along with Zul’Aman.  When I started to play my Holy Paladin within dungeons I was totally amazed at the ease Prot Paladins would hold AOE aggro, it was to easy.  For want of a better word it was the easy mode tank.  PUGS had to work as a unit for a Warrior tank to function given the lack of AOE control, yet with Paladins the group could go nuts and basically do whatever, aggro was going to be held no matter the question.

On to Wrath..

I had to come to a decision which class to play, I chose good old Grimhammer over my Paladin and Warlock.  The changes in store for Prot Warriors were awesome, I’d read up on the class beta forums and everywhere else.  I was waiting to be impressed.

Impressed I damn well was!

First dungeon, Nexus.  Forget marking I’ll just try and hold everything on me, hay I have to try this new aoe tanking ability out!  Shockwave, unlimited target Thunderclap, multi target Sunder Armor (via glyphs), massively increased overall DPS.  Mad Shield Slam damage along with Revenge. All of this =

I simply never lost agrro.  The groups we ran this dungeon with were hardly the best, people were attacking targets all over the place, even when they were marked.  It made no difference it was really up to me if i really wanted to hold aggro on everything.  I bloody loved it, no longer did i have to completely depend on DPS classes with brains i could accommodate the trigger happy nutters to.

This is my current talent build and I’m loving it something sexual.

In my next few class related posts I’ll speak in more detail about talent builds along with how effective they actually are for pure solo play, so stay tuned.