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Gil Hamilton wrote:Yeah. Even if someone does care, the Crossroads is pretty far out of the way to travel to do anything about it. Back in vanilla WoW, it was less of a problem because in alot of places some level 60s might just happened to be passing through. However, now no one is going to shlep their ass out to the Barrens except if Strand of the Ancients bugs and you end up getting dumped there on a rez turn a team switch. Its a waste of time, because the griefer will just move on and if he's inconvenienced some people to come chase him, well, nothing would make him happier. Level 80s have dailies to grind, mats to farm, and heroics to run, they can't come out to chase a level 62 DK gnome who's decided to troll Tarren Mill.

Of course, there are CITY raids, but that typically has another purpose. It's become in vogue, at least on my server, to put together raids to hit major cities to try and get the Kill All the Leaders achievement, typically by sneaking in late at night while no one is on. Unless you are cool, then you time your attack on alliance cities to happen about 5 minutes after Wintergrasp starts and blitz through them while all the other sides heavies are occupied. That's fun. We actually managed to snake Tyrande and Valen that way.

Lol, even back in the day, a crossroads raid was pussy shit.

Crown wrote: Sorry, but had to say it. Current Reckoning is only good for AoE grind, and you would never put more than 3 points into it as an 80 tanking build, might even make Protadins somewhat viable in PvP again ...

You know, I keep hearing this.... but where else in the Prot tree are you gonna spend those points? The bonus to HoP? Frankly, it's easy enough to get every survivability talent in the tree. After that, there's really nothing to spend points on but raising DPS (And threat, but who worries about threat these days?)

Thirdfain wrote:

Crown wrote: Sorry, but had to say it. Current Reckoning is only good for AoE grind, and you would never put more than 3 points into it as an 80 tanking build, might even make Protadins somewhat viable in PvP again ...

You know, I keep hearing this.... but where else in the Prot tree are you gonna spend those points? The bonus to HoP? Frankly, it's easy enough to get every survivability talent in the tree. After that, there's really nothing to spend points on but raising DPS (And threat, but who worries about threat these days?)

I suppose you could put it into Heart of Crusader, but that's nothing more then raising raid DPS, and kinda useless in a 25 man enviroment, and most 10 man. As you say, you pretty much put wherever you can raise some DPS.

It's somewhat akin to warrior tanking wherein the new build is 15/5/51, because Deep Wounds gives the tank an upgrade of 7-8% damage increase. Extra DPS because that has become the by word in boss killing. Threat is outlandish, and only a complete drooling fool is not going to hold a boss.

All in all, I do enjoy that the threat window is as large as it is. Makes the DPS to push their windows and kill bosses faster and not worry about a threat ceiling.

(pic was taken during the 10man after the raid)
Just wanted to share that with everyone, as an example of how insane DPS can get during Thaddius 25man. Top 4 spots, all fury warriors, all doing over 5k DPS and 2 million damage done. 2 blood lusts, and Balator got a Hysteria from the Blood DK we had in the raid (added about 200-300 DPS).

Anyways, hoping to get in and get some more tries on Sapph and KT 25man, finally managed to get enough healers for us to go to them (we're going with 9 since a lot of people have been slacking on FR gear) and hopefully tonight or tomorrow we'll take our guild first look at Malygos 10man.

Also had some attempts at 1 drake Sarth on 10 and 25man, it certainly ramps up the difficulty a whole notch. The level of co-ordination alone puts it on a Kael (TK) level, since you need people being exactly on the ball to avoid lava waves and do their jobs properly.

My numbers are going to seem pitiful following with that, but what the Hell.

I am rather proud of myself. I'd been running as a Blood DPS for a while now, and felt like a change of pace. I had tried Unholy, but pets don't really do it for me. So I flew to Shadow Vault, bought a pair of the rep swords, put Fallen Crusader on one and Razorice on the other, then gated to Acherus and respecced 3/50/18, Deep Frost dual-wield DPS, and skilled up by slaughtering Tyr's Hand a few times.

Then I proceeded to go into Heroic Violet Hold (my guild, being small, is just starting to get into regularly running heroic 5-mans. However, we are beginning to reach our gangly teenage phase where we will be able to run some 10-mans without pugging), and apparently went on a rampage. Haven't installed recount yet, so I don't know my full numbers. I was able to get just shy of 2k dps on Cyanigosa, though. Which is pretty damn good considering that I haven't geared up nearly as much as I would have liked (my hit rating's good, but could use some work, and I haven't been too lucky for drops). Makes me hope that a PUG for Archavon 25 starts up some time I'm online, so I can give a shot at DPSing with full raid buffs.

2k DPS in a 5man ain't too bad, should scale up to about 2.5, maybe 3k in a 10man environment, more in 25man (dependent on buffs and rotation). If you can manage 2k DPS thats more than enough to do the early bosses in 10man, Arachnid Wing is pretty forgiving on low gear, plague wing isn't too bad either its only really when you hit up Construct and Military that the DPS requirements take a jump, since most of construct quarter is a DPS race in some way (Patchwerk due to the enrage, Grobbulus due to the speeding up of the mutagens, Gluth has an enrage, and Thaddius has a very tight enrage).

If you're just jumping into 10mans, your best bet is to just aim to take down Arachnid/Plague and Sartharion each week, the amount of gear that drops will gear you up fast enough. Admittedly I pretty much skipped the heroics and 10man phase and jumped straight into 25man with Sunwell level gear (as did a fair few members of the guild).

Pro Tip as well: If you want your healers to like you, take at least one class per raid that can provide replenishment. Mana regen mechanics are very tied into this right now, and having a spriest or ret pally can really help your healers out a lot early on when they haven't got amazing gear.

lol, I'm kind of impressed with the resurgence of the Warrior, even if it is a warriorogue. Blizz pretty much killed the warrior class in favor of the Paladin not to long after BC. After they killed the Rogue class that is. I find it funny that DPS warriors are prominent now.

Knife wrote:Lol, even back in the day, a crossroads raid was pussy shit.

Don't knock the ole Crossroads Raids. On my server, when the Alliance decided they just needed to hit Crossroads, some wild shit could go down, with well over a hundred people there. It was good times.

Thirdfain wrote:

Crown wrote: Sorry, but had to say it. Current Reckoning is only good for AoE grind, and you would never put more than 3 points into it as an 80 tanking build, might even make Protadins somewhat viable in PvP again ...

You know, I keep hearing this.... but where else in the Prot tree are you gonna spend those points? The bonus to HoP? Frankly, it's easy enough to get every survivability talent in the tree. After that, there's really nothing to spend points on but raising DPS (And threat, but who worries about threat these days?)

I run with this:

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-talen ... rr&n=Ryune

My guild's Pallytank uses this: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-tale ... &n=Yngvild

He didn't use Reckoning pre-Wrath, which I find kind of interesting. Then again, ten less points.

My guild's Pallytank uses this: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-tale ... &n=Yngvild

He didn't use Reckoning pre-Wrath, which I find kind of interesting. Then again, ten less points.

Reckoning wasn't a good talent choice pre-wrath, either. It gives more chances for the boss to parry (which resets its swing timer and results in the tank taking more damage), and the threat generation it produces is minimal at best, easily dwarfed by Holy Shield for instance.

Currently, Reckoning for a tank is quite simply a very bad idea. It's a complete and utter waste of 5 talent points that could be much better spent elsewhere. Tank threat generation has been buffed, and Paladin tanks have a bunch of shiny new tools to generate even more threat. Reckoning will provide no benefit, while making the tank take slightly more damage.

In fact, in your specific example, your guild's tank didn't take Judgments of the Just, which is an excellent damage mitigation talent since it eliminates 20% of incoming white swings. If he wants higher threat generation, he should take those 5 points and stick them in Seals of the Pure, a straight 15% bonus to his Seal damage that doesn't rely on procs and doesn't generate additional Parries. I'd also get rid of Improved Judgment and put the points in Judgments of the Just for better mitigation. Judging by his gear he's managed to do perfectly well, but he'd do better with a few changes.

Currently, Reckoning for a tank is quite simply a very bad idea. It's a complete and utter waste of 5 talent points that could be much better spent elsewhere. Tank threat generation has been buffed, and Paladin tanks have a bunch of shiny new tools to generate even more threat. Reckoning will provide no benefit, while making the tank take slightly more damage.

Here's my build: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-tale ... n=Ekatrine

A few points.

Where else are you going to spend those 5 points? You need to have 30 points in Protection to move up and get Sacred Duty and One-Handed Weapon Spec. That means you need to drop points into either Reckoning, Improved Hammer of Justice, Divine Guardian, Blessing of Kings, Stoicism, or Guardian's Favor. Of those, BoK is useless to me because our raid group has another paladin who has taken it (it's a shit choice for protection in general, you will by and large be Sanc'ing yourself in any case.) Divine Guardian is useless for a tank, Stoicism and Guardian's Favor are both PvP talents. Reckoning adds an occasional nice burst of damage, AND helps me lay down my SoV stacks more rapidly when I'm tanking multiple mobs. Improved Hammer of Justice is a decent idea- but a 30-second cool down is not really that great when it's exceedingly rare for a pack of mobs to last 30 seconds... and it does nothing to bosses.

Moreover, if you are talking about parry-hasting the enemy, the effect is so small as to be negligible. Until they add Brutallus style heavy hitters to progression, there's absolutely no point- right now, parry gibbing does not exist. Hell, in most boss fights I PREFER to be hit more often; I need that mana.

Essentially, tanks now are responsible for dealing DPS as well as tanking. In the Prot tree, it is easy to get ALL the survivability talents. Once that's out of the way, I think it's more than reasonable to start looking for ways to up your DPS. Reckoning does that, and also fills out your requirements for the lower tree.

Seals of the Pure is not a good answer; it doesn't get you the extra points in lower Prot, and it's not nearly as good as Heart of Crusader and Imp. Blessing of Might (unless you raid regularly with a Ret; I don't.) I'd only spec that way if I always had a Ret around.

Oh, and Benediction is pretty much garbage unless you are OT'ing...

-edit- Oh, and the one point in improved Judgements is aboslutely essential for tanking; 9-second Judgements are the cornerstone of the 6969 rotation.

Woohoo, downed Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad 25man last night, here's the SS as proof.





I raid lead both, Sapphiron was a bit messy all night and we had some stupid wipes due to people not moving right and some people getting beaten by the bug (if an undead gets iceblocked, Tauren player models are too big to stand behind it and get Deep Breathed). Ended up getting some people to craft some Frost resistance and then it went freaking perfectly.

Kel'Thuzad was actually just a zerg attempt, since we only had about 15 minutes of the raid left, I gave a quick overview of the abilities and we just charged in and went for it. Phase 2 was messy, as we lost the majority of the melee and a few healers to Frost Blasts, but we got some CRs going as well as some ankhs and kept going. Reached Phase 3 and I just called for pure nuke, as we only had one OT who was tanking all 4 Guardians, which meant towards the end of the fight he had 4 adds that we about 4 times his size being tanked, with his hp fluctuating between 33k and 1k.

As a side-note, it's already hotfixed, you can no longer spellsteal Bone Armor.

So, yesterday we went for a casual 20-man run of AQ20, and due to how easy it was, we then went into AQ40. We went on, happily crushing anything in our path, wondering what all the fuss about 40-man raids was, when we got to the Twin Emperors.

Ouch.

Having only a couple (literally) casters didn't help either.

But, all in all, it was my first time into AQ, and it was fun. If there's something I love about the rising level-cap and OP new gear, is being able to see all that content at last.

Thirdfain wrote: Improved Hammer of Justice is a decent idea- but a 30-second cool down is not really that great when it's exceedingly rare for a pack of mobs to last 30 seconds... and it does nothing to bosses.

Its an interupt, thats useful on bosses.

True, however-

1. Interrupting every thirty seconds is still not very often at all;
2. I raid with 2 rogues who can kick every 10 seconds. In other words, my additional interrupt is piss in the ocean.

Thirdfain wrote:

Crown wrote: Sorry, but had to say it. Current Reckoning is only good for AoE grind, and you would never put more than 3 points into it as an 80 tanking build, might even make Protadins somewhat viable in PvP again ...

You know, I keep hearing this.... but where else in the Prot tree are you gonna spend those points? The bonus to HoP? Frankly, it's easy enough to get every survivability talent in the tree. After that, there's really nothing to spend points on but raising DPS (And threat, but who worries about threat these days?)

Like I said, you only need three to open the rest of the tier talents. It's not really worth anything more than that, at end game raiding. And parry gimping is a myth really, Warriors strike more often than Tankadins and they don't get insta-gibbed. Mind you I haven't tanked at end game and this is mostly theorycraft.

Crown wrote:

Thirdfain wrote:

Crown wrote: Sorry, but had to say it. Current Reckoning is only good for AoE grind, and you would never put more than 3 points into it as an 80 tanking build, might even make Protadins somewhat viable in PvP again ...

You know, I keep hearing this.... but where else in the Prot tree are you gonna spend those points? The bonus to HoP? Frankly, it's easy enough to get every survivability talent in the tree. After that, there's really nothing to spend points on but raising DPS (And threat, but who worries about threat these days?)

Like I said, you only need three to open the rest of the tier talents. It's not really worth anything more than that, at end game raiding. And parry gimping is a myth really, Warriors strike more often than Tankadins and they don't get insta-gibbed. Mind you I haven't tanked at end game and this is mostly theorycraft.

Parry gibbing hasn't happened because nothing really has shown what Mother Shaz did. Also there's a lot more expertise running around on tank gear as well.

So, if you only drop 3 points... Where do you spend the other 2? Since level 5 Reckoning gets procs off of blocked attacks, you're going to have it activate much more often. Say, every 20 hits on you when you are block capped? At 3, it only activates what, 6% of the time, and only when the enemy hits you? Since the enemy NEVER hits me (at least not from the front,) 3 points in reckoning is literally compltely useless. Those extra 2 points make it viable.

Thirdfain wrote:So, if you only drop 3 points... Where do you spend the other 2? Since level 5 Reckoning gets procs off of blocked attacks, you're going to have it activate much more often. Say, every 20 hits on you when you are block capped? At 3, it only activates what, 6% of the time, and only when the enemy hits you? Since the enemy NEVER hits me (at least not from the front,) 3 points in reckoning is literally compltely useless. Those extra 2 points make it viable.

I see your point, however those 2 points can literally go anywhere you want. If you feel like dropping those 2 points in the talent go for it, personally if you're going for the 5/56/6 +4 build for the 969 rotation, it really doesn't matter as long as the end tier talents in Prot are maxed out. Reckoning unfortunately scales negatively, you'll dodge and parry (further negating the hit proc) and you'll be solely relying on a block proc for a pitiful amount of TPS.

Yes, there aren't any other stellar places to drop those extra 2 points, not arguing there are, just saying all you need in Reckoning is 3 to open the rest of the tree, since the other early talents are an equal waste to a Tankadin. You certainly don't need Reckoning in your tanking build, you only take it to open the rest of the tree. Whether you max it or not depends entirely on your raid compisition and play style.

*shrug*

You certainly don't need Reckoning in your tanking build, you only take it to open the rest of the tree. Whether you max it or not depends entirely on your raid compisition and play style.

\
I couldn't agree with that sentiment any more.

I don't tank with Reckoning, never have, and this is how I do it.

A tangent, but has anyone else in this thread experienced the living hell that is Sartharion with Three Drakes yet?

I feel like my guild is very, very close to a kill on this, but the margin of error permitted in this fight is so slim as to be practically non-existent. Our main issue has generally been keeping Sartharion's tank alive when Shadron lands, as that 100% fire damage debuff has given us some spectacular instagibs. I'm talking 40, 50,000 damage here, to a target that hasn't got that much health normally, the least to say with Sartharion's 25% overall reduction active. Granted, we used a warrior when we might have been better suited using a Death Knight or Bear, but hopefully that will be seen to when we try again this week.

That fire breath spike, though, is really nasty. I respec'd from HolyRet to HolyProt just to pick up Divine Guardian to help mitigating some of those insane numbers, and it's been a big help. We did try it once with a DK tank, and the survivability increase over the warrior was very noticeable, imo, but we still couldn't complete the encounter. It seems like even one loose add, or one dead DPS, can break any attempt.

The most I've been to thus far was a one-drake pull that just barely squeaked it out at the last second.

The closest I've come to a three-drake pull was a pst sent by a friend of mine in the premier raiding guild on the sever in which every other word was 'motherfucking'. I felt bad, but I couldn't help a laugh, the nerdrage was so pure.

Note: to my knowledge they've actually managed the three-pull a time or two, but it's still an event that sparks a massive Alliance Wintergrasp when it's over.