Tank like a girl

Here’s the 2nd and for now last part of the Formspring mailbag, but once questions pile up again, I will answer them again. As a reminder, you can go here to ask me any questions, anonymously, or leaving your name, whatever you want.

1. If you play(ed) Dungeons and Dragons, what class would you pick? Also, if you have played or still play, which version do you prefer? 3.0,3.5,4.0 etc.

It’s actually been years since I last played D&D. The last version I played was 3.5. As for characters, I’ve always leaned towards playing melee classes, so either ranger, rogue or warrior. Rangers are probably my D&D favorite.

2. How do you generate AOE threat with disparate mobs? I’m thinking about (for example) the waves in HoR. DKs can taunt, DG, and silence to bring in ranged mobs. How do you do it as a warrior?

As a disclaimer, I am not the best HoR tank. I tank it for friends only, and even then I will curse a lot. The waves in the last part get increasingly more difficult to tank as warrior. Heroic Throw has a 1 minute cooldown, so you can use it once in the 2nd wave and once in the last wave and have to figure out other means to handle those mobs in the first place. Definitely spec into Gag Order so that Heroic Throw will silence and then bring the casters to you. You can also Charge/Intercept the casters, but you do risk that the abominations will vomit all over the melee in your group.

Ideally you have people with interrupts. Taunt casters, spell reflect to gain aggro on them, and if you then have someone help you with an interrupt, they should wander over into your Thunderclap/Cleave range. If you do not have interrupts in the party, you will need to head there yourself and Shield Bash a cast, then cluster the mobs together again.

Another example for disparate mobs that I have seen tanks struggling with would be the two large groups of casters in Forge of Souls. As warriors this is actually easy to tank for us, as long as you can grab initial aggro. Charging the Soul Horror in the Center, Thunderclapping and from thereon using Spell Reflect every cooldown will let you tank this fight comfortably. If you lose one of the casters in the back, you can taunt, Intercept, Heroic Throw or head over for Shield Bashing. Mobility is our advantage, so don’t be shy with charging from mob to mob, interrupting as you can and send those shadow bolts right back at them. Yes, unlike HoR I actually love tanking FoS.

For further writing I have done about clustering a pull, see this entry of mine.

3. When someone writes an e-mail to you, do you prefer being addressed as “Kadomi”, or is using your real first name permissible?

I am not hiding my name, it’s mentioned on my About page, but when it comes to WoW I mostly identify with my name as Kadomi. It’s just who I am in WoW.

4. I would imagine that you’ve been fluent in English for some time now. Even so, do you ever encounter a piece of English slang that confounds you for a moment when you first hear it?

I pay for my WoW subscription as staff of a bilingual helpdesk, so I am surrounded by all sorts of native speakers who work in my office, mostly Brits. They will regularly use terms that I do not understand, so it’s always an experience here. It doesn’t even need to be slang to confound me. My SO has a huge, extensive vocabulary and in her verbose description she will use terms I have never heard before. So yeah, my English’s definitely not perfect.

5. How easy would you say you are to be friends with?

That’s a can of worms! I would describe myself as an extremely loyal, caring friend, but I do need time to warm up to people. I am blunt and do not have the ability to sugar-coat my words convincingly which has often led to headbutting with people. A diplomat, I am not. If you can deal with all that, it’s definitely not that hard to be friends with me at all.

6. Xtian913 wants to know: Kadomi, I know you said in your blog that your SO stopped playing WoW, but… why? I know everyone needs a little time off from the game, but so many years of enjoying it, why just stop?

When I read this question to my SO, she thought I was shitting her and that I set her up, but no, it’s a real question! Her answer remains the same as it did when she quit: ‘I got bored of pressing the right buttons in the right order for hours.’ She says she doesn’t think WoW sucks, but that she is just bored of it. I’ll continue to woo her back for Cataclysm, but chances are really really slim at this point. I think she said only riding snails could bring her back. Hello Blizzard, think you could use those snails models for mounts instead of non-combat pets? I would love you forever!

And that covers all questions for now. Hope you enjoyed.

Months ago, I think it was in February, I mentioned in one of my blog posts that I have a Formspring account now and that everyone’s welcome to ask questions. Then I promptly forgot about it. Shame on me!

Yesterday I got an e-mail alerting me that I had gotten a new question, which reminded me that I have this account still. Guess what, I found 13 questions, most of them fairly old. Nevertheless, you deserve your answers, so this is part 1 of a 2-part series of me responding to the questions!

1. What motivates you in WoW? Is it the gear, in-game friends, progression, trying to reach tanking perfection, etc etc., asked by an anonymous reader

I am a very goal oriented WoW player who prefers group content of any kind. Gear is definitely nice, but ultimately a means to an end, to push further in the game. I love progression, but it has to be with my friends, which is why I love the tightly knit 10-man raid environment the most. I am very much a perfectionist and have quit playing characters that I feel I cannot achieve the high standards I set for myself. So, as summary, my top motivation in WoW is to kick some serious ass with my friends and experience all PvE content.

2. Why do you enjoy tanking? What have been your favourite encounters in WotLK?, from another anonymous reader

That’s a vaaaast question and will be answered in my warrior post for the tanking series I started back in March/April. I still intend to finish it. So I will respond to the encounters part instead. I think my favorite encounter vote goes to *drumrolls* Mimiron! I thought it was a well-thought encounter that was complex to master, made you feel like you were going insane, especially in P4. But so much fun! Definitely a WotLK highlight. I pretty much am a fan of most Ulduar encounters, though Freya can go DIAF. I thought they all had some interesting mechanics, and it helped that the instance was beautiful.

ICC is not quite as inspiring as Ulduar to me. Of the encounters in there so far I would say that I like Putricide most. It has the complexity that I expect as wing endboss, requires good coordination, and then goes crazy in P3. Besides, it offers the offtank a unique role as abomination that is far superior to many other fights. My thoughts on off-tanking in ICC deserve a post of its own.

3. Your posts on gear for new 80′s are great. What do you think about Heroic level talent specs & glyphs for new Warrior tanks, i.e. pre Raid builds? Everyone’s gotta start somewhere , another anonymous question.

I did actually post about builds way back in April 2009, when dual specs were released. In my mind, you either use the threat build including Deep Wounds, or you use a more defensive build for progression raiding. For someone who’s a fresh 80, Deep Wounds all the way. As new tank you’ll probably struggle with AoE threat, so pick up Cleaving, Shockwave and Sunder Armor, and Thunder Clap is a must as minor.

Soon, we’ll have vastly different talent trees, and I am looking forward to finding out what will work best in Cataclysm.

4. Are you going to roll a werewolf or a goblin in the expac? asked by Jenny

For the Horde! There’s no question for me, I want to play a goblin, very badly. Ever since I watched Gravity’s goblin DK video, I want me one of those. It doesn’t hurt that all reports I have heard so far indicate that the goblin starting zones are fantastic fun. I am actually transferring my level 70 rogue off Bronzebeard, to make room for the future goblin hunter. I really need more character slots.

I will eventually roll a worgen as well, but likely only to play the start zone. I don’t have room on Bronzebeard for a 2nd alliance character, and I do not know any other alliance players US-side. I know a lot of people are very excited about the worgen, but they don’t actually appeal to me that much.

5. On the ‘Bioware spectrum’, when starting a new single-player RPG, do you usually play light side/paragon/good or dark side/renegade/evil?, asked anonymously.

Bioware has been for years the only crack that gets me away from WoW. I have played KotOR, Jade Empire, both Mass Effects and of course Dragon Age. I always go for the paragon side somehow. The glowier the halo, the happier I am. I always peter out when I try to play the dark side. But I owe it to myself to complete Mass Effect 2 as a badass renegade sometime in the near future. I am almost more excited about Mass Effect 3 than Dragon Age 2.

6. Now that you have tried both, what’s harder in end game – healing or tanking?

I think every role in WoW is equally hard in end-game. To be a capable tank, healer or DPS, it’s all challenging, to do it right. I know that people tend to say DPS is easily replaced, but I don’t find that’s true at all. Progression falters when DPS is lacking, just as much as it stalls when tanks have low health pools or healers can’t keep people up. I personally am still more intimidated by healing, but I also find it extremely fun, just as much as tanking.

7. There is a lot of discussion on WoW becoming too easy. What are your thoughts? Also, do you think there will be a gap between now and Cataclysm where people are milling around in-game because everyone already has T9/T10 gear?

I firmly believe that dungeon design dumbed down a lot of elements in WotLK. A complete lack of scaling has made heroics laughable since Ulduar, so for almost 1.5 years now. As tank, I miss careful pulls, marking kill order, assigning crowd control options. Even before we all started outgearing heroics, people had lost interest in that, because they had AoE buttons and tanks were suddenly able to keep large groups of mobs on them.

As a 10-man raider, I don’t feel WoW has become too easy. Naxxramas was an easy raid, Ulduar was awesome, ToC is this weird place that takes as long as a TBC 5-man would have taken, and Icecrown Citadel has some great encounters.

This question was actually asked 5 months ago, and it should be pretty obvious that a lot of us are now milling around in game, because almost all content is done. My guild needs LK and Ruby Sanctum still, but after that, there’s only hardmodes left and that’s not really new content. I have no idea what we’ll all do, aside from leveling more and more alts.

And that’s it for today, I will continue this on Tuesday. If you want to add your own questions, please do!

And more importantly, is anyone still reading this? Thank you all for your concerned e-mails, I did appreciate every single one of them.

What happened since the last posts in April? Severe tank burn-out, is what. I basically made a promise to myself when I started blogging that I would take a positive approach to WoW and my chosen class, because there’s already a ton of negativity out there in the so-called WoW community. But back then in April, when the other three guild tanks posted their takes on why they love tanking like a girl, I was not in the correct mindspace to tell you why I love being a warrior tank, because at the time I didn’t love it.

It’s now four months later, and I am back to doing what I love, tanking for my guild. Remember that series of tanking posts? Our druid disappeared into the nether, without so much as a word of goodbye, and thus our tank numbers were down to 3. Our paladin can often not make our raid times, so instead of chain-healing it up, I went back to tanking, and fell in love with it all over again.

I generally have a strong dislike of tanking LFD groups in full pugs, because I have been treated like crap from people who only care about speed and their e-peen. On the other hand, on my healer alts I have met so many arrogant tank douchebags that I can relate to some general contempt people have for tanks. Anything from tanks needing all greens as their ‘fee’ for tanking to guys who will insult their groups, feeling entitled from their 30 second queues. I probably have seen it all.

This only makes me appreciate the good tanks more. The calm tanks who will keep an eye on healer mana, especially lesser geared healers. The ones who will spare a friendly word to the rest of the group and just do their job. People like us, we’re still out there. And so I am back.

I am excited about Cataclysm. I hope that it will bring about some changes to the game, like the return of CC, a reduced pace, an end to the zerg rushes that are all everyone knows at this point in WoW. I am not going to dig into the prot changes yet, because things are so in flux, ever-changing. But I have a good feeling about Cataclysm.

Game-wise, I am now 11/12 in Icecrown Citadel-10. I just spent my first six hours wiping on LK phase 2. So far phase 2 has been the brick wall we throw ourselves against, but our work has only just started. I have tanked every fight in there on my warrior, and healed every fight on my shaman. I have six level 80s now, but I only actively play 3 of them at a time. At this moment it’s my warrior, my shaman and my latest 80, my druid.

I have to finish leveling my paladin to 80, she’s been at 78 for months now. When I was burnt out on tanking, I was also burnt out at the thought of doing the tank gear grind on a second character. But I will, eventually. Cataclysm is still far away, and WotLK’s greatest failure is that there is not enough to do, aside from ‘level to 80 and get the character geared’, over and over. I bet that the number of people with characters in endgame has never been higher than today. A common complaint is that there’s nothing to do aside from raiding, and when you have a guild with only six hours of raiding a week, at most, there’s not much reason to be on inbetween.

So here I am, ready to tell you more stuff about life as a prot warrior, ready to share my bucket list, my general view of tanking in WotLK and whatever else comes to mind. Feels good to be back. I hope a few of you will still be here to read it.