I want to make sure my opinion of this goes on the record.

On my Feral Tank gear list, I list the Mantle of Shadowy Embrace, which drops from Keli’dan the Breaker in Heroic Blood Furnace, as the best Feral Tanking shoulders you can get, strictly from PvE, prior to 25 man raids and your Tier 4 Shoulders from High King Maulgor.

This is true. If you get these shoulders to drop for you, they will serve you… adequately.

HOWEVER.

The Merciless Gladiator’s Dragonhide Spaulders are now available to purchase for 11,250 Honor and 20 Arathi Basin Marks of Honor earned in the Battlegrounds. 

1,000 Honor a day is an easy goal that can be accomplished in an hour or so, assuming you are doing the daily PvP quest that adds a bonus of 418 Honor. 

If you choose, there is a repeatable quest that has you turn in 1 of each of the 4 types of Battleground Marks of Honor in exchange for 314 Honor. You can turn in this quest as many times in a day as you have Marks of Honor. You can grind losing BGs and turn in 4 marks in this quest ALL DAY LONG if you have the stomach for it. (Yes, the quest had been removed, but they brought it back in patch 2.4).

Therefore, as you can see, even participating in 4 failed battlegrounds will net you 1 of each type of Mark, and turning them in will get you 314 Honor. And this is on top of the Honor you are getting from playing in the BG itself.

If you are unfamiliar with the way Battleground rewards work, you get Honor for killing your opponents, you get a little bonus Honor for taking part in a losing battle, and you gain a nice big chunk of bonus Honor for winning the battle. You gain 1 Mark of Honor of the appropriate type if you lose, and 3 if you win. If you are in Alterac Valley, you get bonus Honor every time you are close by when a PvE boss gets downed. So beig on the offense can be… rewarding.

Each Battleground is different, but it has been my experience that, for an inexperienced player such as myself, taking part in Alterac Valley is most suited to PvE gear, as the bulk of the success is based on fighting and destroying PvE bosses (Captains, Lieutenants and Generals of the opposing faction). A Feral Tank with solid gear will be very welcome to tank and destroy these bosses. Remember this.

Also, Alterac Valley, even if you lose, will on the average net you more Honor per hour that the other BGs, unless the game turns turtle, pure defense on someone’s part.

Regardless of how you decide you enjoy playing, for about an hour to an hour and a half of PvP a day, you should be able to reach 1,000 Honor. If you make sure you play at least 1 Arathi Basin BG each day, then if you win at least 3 of them and lose the rest, in no more than 14 days you can have both the Honor AND the Arathi Basin Marks of Honor necessary to purchase the Merciless Gladiator’s Dragonhide Spaulders.

Think about that. One hour a day, for two weeks. And you are guaranteed to have the absolute best tanking shoulders you will ever see until the expansion comes out or you are past Karazhan and doing 25 man raids.

Without needing to use DKP. Or hoping for a lucky drop.

And without needing to organize 5 man Heroic instance runs. It’s a goal you can easily achieve solo.

Let’s look at these two pieces for a moment.

The Mantle of Shadowy Embrace has 262 Armor, +39 Agility, +33 Stamina and +34 Attack Power.

The Merciless Gladiator’s Dragonhide Spaulders have 377 Armor, +30 Strength, +21 Agility, +39 Stamina and +14 Intellect. They have +21 Resilience Rating, and two sockets. If you were to acquire a second piece of the set, say the Helm, then on top of the resilience the new piece already has, you’re getting the 2 piece set bonus of +35 Resilience. Welcome to damn near uncrittable already.

Assume you are trying to balance these two shoulders, and put Delicate Living Rubies in the two sockets for more Agility. That let’s you break even on Agility, or close to it, gives you more Stamina, you get twice the Attack Power from the Strength, a boatload more Armor, and the Resilience is all pure win to bring you closer to uncrittable. We’re not talking a little better than the best PvE shoulders prior to 25 mans, we’re talking a LOT better.

But.. the sockets give you flexibility. Instead of adding more Agility to increase your Dodge, you could put two Solid Stars of Elune in there, giving your shoulders +63 Stamina.

Shoulders with +63 Stamina. And 377 Armor. And +21 Resilience. And Hell, let’s throw a respectable +21 Agility on there.

Are you serious? It’s enough to make you weep.

So… you don’t like PvP?

Do you like to tank? Hmmm?

If so, then suck it up, PvP the bare minimum necessary, and get these damn shoulders.

I’m not kidding around anymore, just do it.

Oh… and don’t forget, that Honor is Honor, it doesn’t matter what level you are when you earn it. Marks are the same way. You’re not level 70 yet? It doesn’t matter, you can PvP in BGs at every level past what, 10? You can be earning Honor in little bitty chunks when you’re bored and climbing on up, and have all the Honor you could ever need ready and waiting for you.

So… you don’t like the asshats in BG chat?

Hey, I sympathise… I totally understand.

That, my friends, is the price you will pay to be a badass tank.

Okay, so I know there is a lot of news coming out, and as we are still a LONG way away from Wrath being released, I am not going to try to analyze stuff… yet.

But just in case you haven’t seen it yet, and so you know it’s out there so you can go look for more info, here are some of the things said at the Blizzard World Wide Invitationaal about Feral Druids…

First, there WILL be a brand new Dire Cat form with a new model, AND there will be a new model for Dire Bear form.

A panelist said that, when asked about changing the appearance of the skins for Druid forms, that they are thinking maybe, but they are afraid of community outcry, after the unanticipated rage they experienced over changes they made to Rogue Stealth animations in previous patches.

So, MAYBE they are thinking of changing the forms to a more beautiful appearance like Andriges’ work, but maybe not.

Shaman’s Windfury Totem WILL affect Druids in forms… AND will coexist with weapon buffs such as Weightstones, because Windfury Totem will be a player buff rather than a weapon buff.

That is a massive change, as far as Feral Druids go. Matt Rossi on the podcast mentioned it first, damn him, but I was gonna say it too… being the main tank as a Bear and having Windfury active? OMIGOD!!!!

Oh, and… Shaman Totems will affect the entire raid, NOT just the 5 man segment of the raid they happen to be in. Hey, that’s what they said. So, not only do you get Windfury Totem as Bear tank (or Kitty), but you also get Strength of Earth and Grace of Air.. oh, and did I mention they are COMBINING Strength of Earth and Grace of Air into one totem? And that is even if the Shaman is NOT in your 5 man segment of teh raid.

So yeah.. Shamans are going to be MASSIVELY buffing Feral Druids with Windfury… I love it.

And they said that they are working on the Feral Druid range bug, and they MAY have it fixed by the time Warthof the Lich King is released. LOL.

They are NOT removing Diminishing Returns from Cyclone as they had discussed. Instead, they are making Entangling Roots work indoors AND out! Viable Druid CC! Without long cast times! Yay!

So…. that’s what we got so far… and as Wrath is playable at the WWI, I bet we are going to get tons of hands on impressions.

I hope that this encourages you to go seek out more info… I know that WoW Insider has been doing a great job at covering everything. While I pugged Kara last night with Cassieann and Doodlebug until 1:00 AM, WoW Insider were up all night long freaking out and transcribing and going nuts.

So now that I’ve whet your curiosity.. go! Have fun!

Oh, and just cause I can’t help myself… Hunter’s PETS get their own talent trees, three trees, Utility, DPS and Tanking. God, that is gonna be fun to play with.  AND, there will be new pet classes… AND some pet classes will have unique abilities in their trees! Expect BRK and Mania to go nuts… I wish I could see the look on Mania’s face right about now. OMIGOD TALENT TREES, GREAT… BUT, (here it comes…) when asked about new Pet Stable Slots.. a single word answer from the panel… NO.

WTF?!?

The final part of this resto druid gear series went up this morning on WoW Insider.

You can check it out here.

I have said in the past that, as a druid tank, I’m in favor of running forward to grab my targets, and then turning them so that their back is to the party. I like to do this for a mulitude of reasons;

1) Since I am in the front running to grab my mobs, the melee DPS that follows me can run straight up to the mobs’ backside and begin damage quicker rather than having to circle around behind.

2) I can see what is happening with the party, and am positioned properly to use Feral Charge to leap to someone’s rescue if crowd control breaks or one of my adds gets loose or we pull additional mobs through fear, or runners, or just getting too darn close.

BUT, I do not believe that I have mentioned the other reason I’m okay with doing that, and it is because of keybindings.

Most of us use these newfangled mice with the umpteen gazillian buttons on ‘em. I use a Logitech Razor optic myself, corded. And the mouse has right and left buttons, a center mousewheel that is also a button, and a couple buttons on the left side at easy right-handed thumb distance.

I have one of those extra buttons on the left side near my thumb bound to ‘Flip Camera’.

In the Keybindings section of the Esc menu, there is a category called Camera Functions, and one of those functions is Flip Camera. It is not, by default, bound to anything. If you do like I did and bind it to a handy mouse button, then with a moments’ touch you can see if anyone is behind you, and help maintain situational awareness without spinning around… and without giving away to a potential enemy that you are aware of their approach. Just a tap of the button and you get the camera view looking behind you, and then you flip back. No change of facing required. I started using it in Arathi Basin before BC came out. I just got sick of being nailed with no clue.

Anyway, it works just as well for keeping an eye on your rear, checking your six while you are facing the party and tanking. It’s very handy to be able to glance behind you to see if a pat is on it’s way, or keep an eye on that other group of enemies behind you that you feel is dangerously close, without having to change facing.

Just something that it occured to me that I’d been using more often now that I’m PvPing again, and then realized I’d never really addressed in the blog.

Anyone else have tips that you think of as being a ‘no-brainer’ that you’d like to share with the group?

I said I’d write it up on the Twisted Nether blogcast, so here we go. 

Two macros that use the Focus mechanic to select a target that you can attack WITHOUT having it selected as your current target, and attack that Focus with Lacerate or Swipe. 

(Don’t panic, a text version of them is in the commets below for copy/pasting. Just copy/paste to Notepad first to clear formatting, since sometimes hidden html makes it from a website straight to the WoW macro section). 

World of Warcraft allows you to set what is called a ‘Focus’.

What a Focus is, is a target you save into memory. After you save that target as a Focus, you can go on about your business, targeting other things, attacking other things, it doesn’t matter. You will continue to have that original target saved as a Focus.

What this let’s you do is write a macro that streamlines the process of making a selected target your Focus, and then when you have targeted something else and are viciously fighting it, you can throw attacks in the direction of your Focus without ever changing who you are currently targeted on.

That’s the key thing; your macro let’s you send a specific attack against a pre-selected enemy other than your current target.

What these macros do, exactly, is as follows;

1) Show the tooltip for the selected ability. When you create the macro, you will need to choose the ‘question mark’ icon for the picture, it will change to the picture of your ability once you move the whole thing to your toolbar.

2) It will clear your saved Focus IF and ONLY IF certain conditions are met;

If you are holding down the Alt key when you activate the macro, your Focus will be cleared. Use this if you accidentally targeted and made your Focus the wrong enemy by mistake. You need to use this because the thing you made your Focus, if it was by mistake, will remain alive and so the macro won’t clear it on it’s own.

If your previous Focus target dies, then the next time you activate this macro, it will clear the previous Focus from memory automatically.

If you make a friend your Focus, for whatever reason, then the next time you try and activate this attack macro it will see your Focus is a friend and will clear it.

If your previous target fades away/despawns while you are doing other things, then it no longer counts as dead. If the Focus has despawned and no longer exists, the Focus is cleared for other uses.

3) The macro now will set your current selected target as the active Focus, SO LONG AS YOU DON’T CURRENTLY HAVE A FOCUS SET UP.

This means the macro is a fire and forget attack on your Focus. You target something, activate the macro the first time, and it sees you don’t currently have a Focus, so it sets your currently active target as the Focus and tries to perform your programmed ‘cast’ action.

If you happen to be out of range of that activity, then you will set the active Focus, but no cast action actually occurs that time. Every time after that, until one of the /clearfocus conditions are met, when you activate the macro it will try to apply your selected cast action. 

It does this whether or not you are in range for whatever ability is supposed to be activated later. From then on, so long as that enemy is alive, it is your Focus. Just remember, if you need to clear your Focus target while it’s still alive so you can select a new Focus to attack, hold down the Alt key when you trigger the macro. 

4) The actual workhorse part of the macro. If you have an active Focus, and it is in range or otherwise fulfills the requirements of the ability you place here, you will cast that attack on the Focus.

The core mechanics of the Focus macros I listed above work great for many different abilities. For example, it is the foundation of the Shackle macro I use on my Priest.

In this particular case, you can use these two macros as ‘X’ target threat generators to help spread your threat generating attacks around.

The idea is, say you have three (or more) targets, but you only need to be tanking two. And it’s close quarters, and you’re afraid your Swipe will break an Ice Trap or a Sheep.

You have a ‘Skull’ target that you will be concentrating on applying the majority of your threat to. I assume you will be attacking the Skull with your Mangle, most of your Lacerates, Feral Faerie Fire, Maul, all that jazz. The Skull is the target your fellow party members are attempting to burn down first, so you want to apply the most threat here.

However, the ‘X’ is the target that your party will try to burn down NEXT. And in the heat of battle it is common for your party to simply redirect the full force of their damage on the ‘X’, all at once. You want to be attacking that sucker and building up pre-emptive threat. And you dno’t want to use Swipe indiscriminately.

With the Lacerate Focus macro, if you set your Focus to the ‘X’, which you can do well out of range just to make sure your Focus is set to your target well before you engage them, then you can select and pull Skull as your main target, and use your Lacerate Focus macro to lacerate the ‘X’ when you choose, precisely. No tabbing or mouse clicking. 

Just, once your enemies get within range, direct your first Mangle and Lacerate to Skull just like normal, hit the Lacerate Focus macro to slam ‘X’ with a Lacerate, hit Mangle again on your still-targeted Skull, etc etc.

As you fight, back away from the Crowd Controlled mobs, so you free up Swipe as an option. Begin to throw Swipe in there, as well. But you will find that you can get some solid threat on both your main and secondary target by adding the lacerate Focus macro to Swiping, and when the Skull finally goes down, your party has plenty of room to let it all out on ‘X’ right from the start.

The Swipe Focus macro comes into play if you are going to be tanking four or more targets, such as in a larger than normal non-elite AOE group.

If you have decided not to use Barkskin-Hurricane to AoE a group, then you can set your Focus as the far left mob of the group, choose the far right mob as your main target, and when you pull, chances are fairly good that you will have Swipe on your main target hitting three mobs on the right, and your Swipe Focus macro hitting three mobs on the left. With, assuming you don’t have more than 6 targets, good overlap.

Doing this takes the ’seat of your pants’ decision making ability out of the picture to a large extent if you get into the habit of doing this all the time. And that is something I don’t recommend. This is absolutely NOT ‘end-game raiding’ kind of tactics.

When you are just starting out, though, having a means to make damn sure you are applying solid threat to your top two targets without tab-targeting or hunting through tightly packed mob nameplates looking for the one you want next can be a big help.

At higher level gear, you will find that Swipe itself, which has a chance to Crit every hit mob, will do very high threat, almost replacing Lacerate entirely. Also, with more powerful DPS as they gear up, fights will become very short as you scramble to apply enough threat as the Skull drops in three seconds, followed by the ‘X’ 2 seconds later.

Because of the way things become so fast paced later on, I prefer seat of the butt improvisation at this point, reacting to changing situations on the fly. Someone gets feared into a group and brings 4 more adds? A macro ain’t gonna help you pick up those mobs and get them locked down.

You’re going to have to be able to improvise, use your Growl, change targets fast and throw Lacerates and Swipes everywhere, use your Challenging Roar to get the group to start hitting you and begin taking Thorns damage, and everything else in your repertoir to grab aggro and hold on tight.

But when you are grouping up in an instance, and you have the luxury of lining up your Marks ahead of time (and if you are assigning target marks, do yourself a favor and download the Quickmarks addon), then a couple Focus macros can help you spread your threat out over two mobs with precision, and help you spread the Swiping love in alrger fights.

I invite all the rest of you tanks out there to suggest your own entry-level 70 tanking techniques to precisely apply Threat. I’m sure there are plenty of wizardry out there to draw on!

Remember, we’re talking here about techniques that a brand new, possibly undergeared level 70 bear tank can use to grab and hold threat on your secondary targets. Simplify!