Comments on: From the mailbag – Barkskin and Tanking

By: Albi

Albi — Tue, 27 May 2008 05:16:40 +0000

Ok, barkskin stays up. learned something new as often in your blog :D

By: Albi

Albi — Mon, 26 May 2008 06:21:53 +0000

Correct me if i’m wrong, but doesn’t SoC go off when it either runs out, is dispelled or the mob dies? so you get the damage anyways?

And I thought you’d lose barkskin when you change your form to bear. So you don’t have any benefit of it at all when tanking in bear form.

By: Kikidas

Kikidas — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:10:16 +0000

Hehe, apologies accepted, Captain Needa.

As someone else mentioned, Warlock AoE is a little dependent on how long the mob lives. If it’s killed before SoC goes off, then we do little DPS. But especially in the pulls before Moroes, those guys live long enough that it’ll set it off. Or the Illhoof fight. Nummy DPS.

The nice thing about SoC is that you set it on one mob, cast it on a second and so on and get no aggro initially. If other AoE is going off at that time, that AoE will set off the first SoC without a doubt, which that explosion will set off the second SoC if it wasn’t already going off. You get this beautiful chain effect. Getting as many SoC’s off before the first explodes is a must if you want those truly spectacular numbers. :)

(I wuv my warlock)

In terms of Barkskin, my group healer (usually my husband) always says ‘Why aren’t you in bear form! What are you doing?’. But he doesn’t have a druid and doesn’t listen to me when I try to explain. Healers. Oy.

By: Karellen

Karellen — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:09:32 +0000

Hey BBB, sorry if my tone came through askew, I wasn’t meaning to pull a “gotcha” or anything…just expressing my thoughts on this one! The now defunct (and your friend-cum-nemesis) Karthis wrote an article on this subject a few months ago if anybody cares to dig it up.

Artorin- Yeah my experience in raiding never extended that far, so if your experience is that using Barkskin before a pull like that is a good move, I’ll certainly take it on your word. In fact, I could see that being a useful tactic for Halazzi in ZA- if you get a Misdirect and the guy his hitting you like a truck even if you’re taking 20% less damage, that’s a win.

By: Saresa

Saresa — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:59:08 +0000

Thankyou for getting back to me so quickly BBB! Your post and everyones replies have helped me learn a great deal about barkskin, and given me some great ideas to test out ;)

By: Erthshade

Erthshade — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:23:52 +0000

Since Blizzard reduced the duration of Barkskin, I made this macro to help me out on those hurricane pulls:

#showtooltip Hurricane
/cancelform
/castsequence reset=30 [mod] Hurricane;Barkskin, Hurricane

What this does is let you hold a modifier to position your targeting circle, then hit the keybind twice and click. 12 seconds minus the 1.5 second global cooldown and the 10 second Hurricane channel time = .5 seconds to position… not good enough.

By: Artorin

Artorin — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:05:59 +0000

I need to learn to edit! Its also help full against spell casters. For instance last boss in Heroic MgT

By: Artorin

Artorin — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:03:51 +0000

I should mention that I’m talking about raid bosses and not heroics or reg instance bosses. For heroics and the sort I generally use enrage just so I take more damage for rage.

By: Artorin

Artorin — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:59:05 +0000

I’m talking bosses like tidewalker and the sorts that hit for around 5-8k that damage reduction will certainly not starve you of rage. Also if its that big of a deal you can use enrage. The increase from barkskin will be alot greater then the decrease in armor.

By: Caelean@Akama

Caelean@Akama — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:40:35 +0000

Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Lifebloom, Barkskin, Hurricane?

And it might be pretty handy in PvP, but I always forget about it…