When I talk about something on the blog, I do try and pick out those things that are entertaining moments, weird moments, or teachable moments.

There has to be a point to it, even if it was just “Well, it made ME laugh.”

Something that happened that was a fun story, something that happened that was out of the ordinary, something that happened that called to mind a topic of discussion many of us might learn from… if only to know what not to do.

And in thinking of blog posts as a teachable moment, thinking about what not to do and how to present it… my mind, inevitably, turned to evil.

A new reality TV show… “How Not to Tank”, with your host, BBB.

Yes, thats right, I felt struck with inspiration for a horrifying series of Youtube videos.

I could join a random pug, and then intentionally do something that tanks should never do, narrate it, and film the entire sequence… including the reactions of the unsuspecting party.

“Today, the Big Bear Butt will demonstrate what happens when a Bear tank tries to free himself from movement impairing effects during the 10 waves of trash in Heroic Halls of Reflection, by shifting out of and back into Bear form. Repeatedly. What will happen, and how will our unsuspecting party react? Let’s find out!”

Seriously, can you imagine how terrible that would be? To be on a run with unsuspecting, innocent folks and intentionally do stuff wrong or stupid, just to film their candid-camera type reactions and then post it?

I have achieved a new, galactic level style of asshattedness.

Even worse… the temptation to actually DO this, if only once, is strong. Now I know what is really meant by “Tempted by the power of the dark side.”

How has this concept not shown up as a regular reality show or on the internet yet?

Stay tuned next week, when our undercover main tank healer goes on strike with loud drama over Legendary item loot priorities right as the main tank pulls the last boss of a heroic Ulduar 25 run, and how the guild leadership reacts after the epic wipe, here, on “Wipe That Raid!”

I’m a sick, sick bear.

On the flip side to yesterdays whinefest, there is a perception that I wanted to touch on briefly for one of our fellow tank classes; the Paladin.

As gear has increased, you see a lot more tanks running and pulling like crazy. And to go with it, I see quite a lot of folks upset about how tanks are doing things in runs.

This post is really for the non-tanks, more than anyone else.

Please remember my friends, not all tanks are created equal.

The mechanics of tank abilities actually vary a great deal.

For Bears and Warriors, we use Rage as the power source for our special abilities. We start our first fight with zero Rage (or what Enrage gives us, work with me here folks), and as we take damage or deal damage, our Rage meter fills up. The longer a fight runs, the MORE Rage we have to deal with things, not less.

For Warriors and Bears, we are endurance machines. Once we get started, we build up steam and can go on and on forever.

Yes, yes, Bears may start slow, but we can go all night long.

Death Knights have that Runic Power stuff, and it refills pretty quick. 

But Paladins… Paladins use Mana.

Paladins start a fight at full force, all guns blazing. But the longer the fight goes, the limper they get.

One of the worst is if you’re overgeared for the Halls of Stone ‘Brann Bronzebeard’ chamber fight, as the mobs die too fast for Judgements to help much, and hit too lightly to really cause you to get heals and mana back. And it goes on and on and on….

My point is, for Warriors and Bears, we commonly leave a battle at full or near full Rage, and it decays slowly enough that we can pause for a few seconds to check mana and health levels of the party, dance a little dance, sing a little song, get down and funky, and still be great for the next pull.

We Bears can pop Enrage to stop Rage from decaying, we can Feral Faerie Fire non-elite mobs at a distance (like Skeletons in Culling of Strat) to stay in combat (Rage only begins to decay when out of combat), all sorts of stuff.

For Paladins, when they are using their abilities, their Mana is going down. And the Silencing shield throw in particular is a mana whore.

Now, Paladins have a couple choices on how to address this.

You could just sit down and drink after most pulls when you get low.

You can use Blessing of Wisdom, or Judge Wisdom instead of Light or whatever.

Or, you can go another route.

A Paladin has a Talent that lets their melee hits refresh the duration of Divine Plea. Divine Plea is an ability that gives MP/5, at the cost of reduced Healing.

If a Paladin tank pops Divine Plea at the start of a pull, then for as long as he’s whacking stuff, he’s getting mana back. If he’s also Judging Wisdom, then there is even more… but the mob has to live long enough to take some whacks to the head for the mana to get back.

Now, this goes along with another key way Paladin tanks get mana back.

Paladin tanks get mana returned to them when they get healed.

Let’s put these things together.

• With the way the gear you can get casually has improved so dramatically in comparison to the Heroics we run, a well geared Paladin tank takes far less damage than before in a Heroic 5 man.
• Less damage taken equals less healing received, and less healing equals less to no mana back.
• Abilities cost mana to use. Less mana back means less abilities available to generate threat and hold aggro.
• Long delays, or even delays of more than a few seconds between pulls means Divine Plea expires, and is on cooldown.

So, what will a smart, well geared Paladin do to adapt to the new situation, keeping their mechanics in mind?

A Paladin will seek to have as little time in between pulls as possible, and as many mobs on them at one time as possible, riding a ragged edge of danger.

A Paladin will want to take enough damage that heals will give back mana, but not so much damage that he’s in danger of dying and wiping the party. And the pulls will need to be frequent enough to keep Divine Plea going all the time.

So you get what we see a lot nowadays. A Paladin tank that pulls a group, establishes solid threat, and as soon as one or two of the first group are dead, run off to grab the next group, trusting in their thrown shield to Silence any casters in the next group and get them huddled close together and pull them back in.

You get continuous chain pulls.

A good Paladin tank will seem to ride a wave of chaos into the heart of the instance, chain pulling across the backs of dead mobs, and leaving the rest of the party to run like hell to keep up.

Now, if you know this going in, then you can be prepared to deal with it, especially on drinking whenever possible if you’re the healer.

As a Druid healer, I love going with a Pally tank, because my HoTs let the tank run ahead of me and still get heals, my Innervate keeps me moving in step if I get low on mana, and I can even Innervate the Paladin if things get out of sync for his mana recovery between pulls.

What I wanted to do was have this post to be my way of saying, when I’m talking about rockstar tanks, I’m not talking about anyone that rushes on ahead or pulls fast, or anything like that.

When I talk about a rockstar tank, I’m talking about one that does his own thing, without any consideration for working with the group as a member of a team.

A Paladin tank can chain pull and run ahead and do all the things he does, in an effort to perform his class well, and still watch the mana bars of the party, the health bars of the group, his own health level, and the aggro of the mobs around him (or her).

A Paladin tank can still mark kill orders to help provide the DPS, especially melee DPS, some guidance.

A Paladin tank can still watch his own health, and adjust his pace accordingly.

A Paladin tank can, in short, push when it’s all good, but remains aware of the status of the rest of the party, and works to make life easier on everyone. And if a mob goes after the healer, or there is chaos in the backfield, he is aware of it, and grabs it back. He’s not just focused solely on the next chain pull, oblivious to the world around him.

In most cases this does not require him to slow down in the slightest, except when the party really, really needs it.

In short, in my opinion, a rockstar tank isn’t necessarily one that moves fast, or pulls lots of things.

A rockstar tank is one that is in their own little world, doing their thing, oblivious to and without consideration for the rest of the team.

A rockstar tank just assumes the rest of the band will be there laying down the supporting music, and if they can’t keep up, they must suck.

Oh, and as a side note; I wonder how many tanks see how someone like the Paladin runs and chain pulls, and being ignorant of the mechanics involved, thinks that running that way is how every class should do it? I wonder, when you see a Warrior chain pull big groups of mobs and lose aggro on some of them, and things get crazy and people start dying, and then they blame the DPS for pulling, were they inspired by a Paladin tank, and just don’t understand we all do our bit in our own special ways?

For the brand new Bear tank, a few fun facts about bear tanking to help you understand why you do what you do, and how things generally work.

We’ll assume you visited my previous post about Specs, and are specced with the key Bear Tanking Talents.

This is in a nutshell how Bear tank abilities work;

• Mangle makes your Lacerate (Bleed) do more damage, Lacerate (Rend and Tear Talent) makes your Maul do more damage.
• Mangle and Maul both can apply Infected Wounds in a  target, slowing them down (Infected Wounds Talent).
• Swipe is instant cast, and costs Rage. (It is affected by the global cooldown).
• Swipe affects a 360 degree radius around the Bear.
• Swipe can affect targets that are slightly outside your normal melee range at the moment. Keyword: Slightly.
• The target of Swipe does not have to be physically in range for Swipe to activate; Swipe will still normally affect targets that are within your range.
• Bears cannot Dodge targets behind them.
• Bears can cast Swipe while moving.
• Every time you successfully achieve a Critical Strike, you activate a personal damage shield/bubble. It lasts for one hit, regardless of how much the damage of the hit would be, and absorbs an amount based on your Attack Power.
• Every time you successfully Dodge or achieve a Critical Strike, you get a small amount of Rage back.
• You also get Rage from dealing damage, and from TAKING damage.
• Growl is a Taunt that forces a targeted enemy to focus on you. It causes NO threat. All it does is raise your threat to be the highest your target sees. If your target has only seen you, it does nothing. If someone else has passed your threat on the target, it RAISES yuor threat level for that target to match.
• Growl can miss.
• Survival Instincts raises your maximum Health when activated. Frenzied Regeneration heals based on your max Health at the time it is activated. Casting Frenzied Regeneration immediately after Survival Instincts gives you bigger FR self heals.
• Barkskin allows you to reduce all damage you take by 20% and can be used to survive attacks that would otherwise kill you. The Tier 9 4 piece bonus reduces the cooldown, further encouraging you to use it often.
• Demoralizing Roar is an AoE ability that reduces a mob’s attack power (by 575 with talents), reducing the damage you take.
• Feral Faerie Fire is free to cast in bear form, causes damage and a large amount of threat, and is a great rotation “filler” if you’re waiting on a global cool down.
• Maul does not consume a global cooldown, can be added to other abilities in macro form so that it is always queued when you use Mangle or Swipe, for example, and when Glyph of Maul is used it strikes two targets. It does a very large amount of threat. Using Maul replaces a normal Rage generating attack, so using it when at low to zero Rage at the beginning of a pull can be dangerous without activating Enrage first.
• Challenging Roar is not a true taunt like Growl – mobs will be forced to attack you for a short time, but it will not raise your threat level with them to be the highest. At the end of the effect, their threat list will be restored. While active, use high threat generating abilities to re-establish aggro on mobs. 
• Enrage generates Rage, but the armor reduction applies to final armor value, not ‘base’ armor before multipliers. With a balanced group, this should simply mean that you take slightly more damage while Enrage is active, and this causes even more Rage to build up. Warning healers that you will be temporarily more squishy can be helpful.
• Lacerate is a bleed that Bears can use and stack to 5. Not only is it good threat but when talented with Primal Gore it can crit and activate Savage defense, this is very useful when stunned as you can still mitigate some damage if Barkskin is on cooldown.
• Demoralizing Roar is great to use right after a charge – not only does it reduce the damage you will be taking from mobs, but it also has more range than swipe which reduces the likelihood of a mob being missed by swipe and going after the healer.
• Berserk is highly useful and has multiple applications. If you are facing mobs or a boss that frequently fears, popping Berserk after the pull can allow you to spam Mangle along with Maul repeatedly without interruption by Fear, allowing you to keep the boss in one place and establish a lot of initial threat. Additionally, as Berserk allows your Mangle to hit three adjacent melee targets in front of you, you can pop it to establish high initial threat on three targets when feeling stretched thin by solid DPS using AoE. 
• Ignore what the people who don’t know Bear Tanks tell you… Bear Tanks fully Talented in Survival of the Fittest do NOT need Defense Rating at all. It is a useful stat, but is NOT required to become uncrittable. Blizzard likes it so much that they are giving every OTHER tank class a Survival of the Fittest type Talent in Cataclysm. 
• Damage absorbed by bubbles, such as those cast by a Disc Priest, still gives the Bear that it is cast on Rage comparable to the damage that would have gotten through. Don’t ask your Priest friends to hold the bubble.

This list is purely for a short form “bullet points to be aware of” kind of list. Comments are welcome for one sentence tips to add to this list. Simply mention your tip in the comments, and I’ll add it to the list. Thanks!

I hope folks will offer tips on how these things can be used in day to day life.

I’ll kick it off, by mentioning that you can target a distant enemy spellcaster that will not come to you, and while he is targeted and outside your melee range, you can use Swipe to cause threat on near targets and Feral Faerie Fire to build threat on the distant target. Select your close Skull kill target, Maul and Mangle and such, then select the distant target and Grow if necessary, Feral Faerie Fire for threat. Assuming your group not doing massive AoE, the only aggro you have to stay ahead of on distant targets is healing aggro. If they ARE doing massive AoE and hitting the distant target… kill close spellcasters first, then kite the melee enemies over to the distant so he IS within range.

Tonight, we went and accidentally did the three new 5 man instances.

Well, it was an accident on the part of myself and Cassie.

I’ve intentionally not read or viewed anything at all about the new instances previous to going. No PTR stuff, no videos, no pictures aside from what was shown at Blizzcon and a few screenshots showing a chamber with a dangling Frostmourne hanging over an altar.

No strategies. No walkthroughs. No “this is what to expect.”

For once I wanted to just see it, cold, up close and get to react to it.

My one regret was that I was in vent and didn’t have game sound turned on for most of it, but hey, I’m a blabbermouth in vent. I fully intend to join LFG as a silly little solo pugger, just so I don’t have to listen to anything other than game sound next time around.

It was an accident, because we expected to take a few shots at the first of the new 5 mans, The Forge of Souls, and see what we could do. After that, we expected to have to leave to put the cats to bed, our son to bed, and watch the season finale of Top Chef.

Just prior to running The Forge of Souls on my Druid as tank, I ran it once on Horde side as a Ret Pally. We set it up, went in, and the rest of the group had seen it the night before, so they had some basics to share. It let me see the fights, and gave me some respect for it even on normal, because the guys I was with are pretty damn good, and the fight against the final boss left two DPS dead at the end, with the Tank dying simultaneously with the boss. And this was on normal mode, and the guys had downed Onyxia 10 with ease a few weeks before. Clearly, something to take seriously.

On Alliance side, I gathered up the same group of us that had wanted to do it last night, and failed from being unable to zone into the instance. I’d promised we’d try a second time, and everyone was up for the challenge.

I went in as the Tank, and it was an unfamiliar sensation to truly know nothing about the actual abilities of the mobs aside from what I’d seen once. But I had a lot of faith that we’d be, well, overpowered.

Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Especially the improvise part.

We went in on the normal setting, looking to learn the ropes, and the thing that really struck me was how long the run up to the first boss seemed, when the groups of enemies are spread so far apart on long, narrow ramps. It really was quite fast to go from the entrance to Bronjahm, but it felt slow, if you know what I mean. It felt as if I should be taking the trash seriously, because of how spread out they were.

One thing I noticed is that the arrangements of the groups meant that almost every pull consisted of some ranged casters that don’t come when you pull, spread out far enough that you can’t blanket them both with a simple ‘run and gun’, or as I prefer to call it ‘charge and stun’ attack.

I found myself, much more than normal, spending my time watching threat levels across all the targets, satisfied that I had aggro and were marking kill orders rather than pin down one mob specifically.

I found it best to mark a ranged caster, charge him and lay down a heavy initial threat level on him, target a distant ranged caster while still Swiping local targets, thrown down a Growl and Feral Faerie Fire, drop back to local Skull to gain some more Threat level distance over the DPS, and then with a safe margin Charge the second or, if there, third ranged caster and pin him down better.

Really, it was group aggro control, the way I liked it from the bad old days of Burning Crusade, when it felt like flying fangs of feral fury spinning around and twisting viewpoints to keep an eye on the two legged lunch and just having fun.

Now, next time I’m going to play with something you may remember… Crowd Control. I think there were many situations where solid coordination and the effective use of Crowd Control would add… fun to the encounters. It’s almost as though they spread out the mobs enough that the designers are asking us to please, just think about using CC. Just for fun.

There are several situations that Crowd Control would have actually added to the smoothness of the run, but I’ll get to that later.

We faced down Bronjahm, I shared the tips I picked up from my horde side friends, and sure enough, easy kill. I was shocked to learn we were getting an Emblem of Triumph for each boss kill. This is normal mode, right? Cool! AND loot? Well, dip me in butter and call me corn!

We moved on, facing the same kinds of trash, with the addition of a couple Spectral Wardens, that are pushovers but they can fear you, so pounding them is not only fun, but a sound tactical idea.

We went on and faced the final boss, and I found that, aside from remembering that he summons many, many, many adds at times, and that he drops puddles of evil goo that you don’t want to stand in, and that he does a mirror soul on a target that causes damage he takes to be shared with the player just like the Eyeball boss of Violet Hold… I couldn’t remember anything else about the fight. 

Still, I had a few plans for what I could remember, such as calling out when someone was hit with mirror soul so we could stop DPS, and to watch for the purple circle that looks like a well and drag the boss away from it, and to call out for everyone to fall in on my position when the army of ghostly adds appears so they all come to me and get their little spirit butts handed to them.

We tried it, and well… I guess it went well, because we won handily, although sadly I somehow allowed dear Cassie to take a dirt nap. Still have no idea what killed her, either.

Well, that was it. A lot to digest, a great new instance, a lot of fun. Time to go.

And Elystia says, “And now we jump in this convenient portal right here to go to the second instance in the chain, Pit of Saron.”

Umm… well, okay. Sure.

In we go… and there’s all sorts of cool stuff, there’s a big ass dragon flying around and a huge wide open space filled with things, and Jaina Proudmoore, and wow, this kicks ass.

It’s day two of the Patch. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go in terms of spoilers.

I will say this.

We are, all of us, in gear that comes from drops in ToC, Heroic ToC, some 10 man Naxx, a few Ulduar 10 drops, and mostly Emblem of Conquest gear. Maybe one or two pieces of Triumph.

We cleared all three instances, in normal mode, without a single wipe, without having any idea of what was coming at us. We took it as it came, we reacted and tried to think our way through (although I think Jardal and Kaelynn cheated and were reading strats from somewhere!) but in the end, we won.

Even that last bit at the end of Halls of Reflection, and DAMN that was exciting and awesome and fun! Woo!

I’ll tell ya, we almost let him kill us just to see what would happen. If you’ve done it, you know what I mean. Damn, that’s tense when you’re all rushing “Kill him now, kill him now, get the fat one, shit Arthas is almost here, crap, go go go! Now RUN!”

God, that’s just a great series of instances to run back to back to back.

Here are some tips for Bear tanking it, for those of you that are raring to get in there, but haven’t yet done it.

First, be prepared to remember the kill order. Don’t hesitate to mark, and remember, if they wear cloth or heal the enemy, kill those bastards first. If they are ranged and don’t pull, you don’t have to get in their grill to hold them, but you DO have to use your Feral Faerie Fire and ranged Growl to keep them on you, and stay over the healer aggro. When in doubt, Feral Charge and make it up close and personal.

When dealing with fast runs, remember your strength; kiting and tanking on the move with your butt, and a moving AoE Swipe that hits 360 degrees. By all means, gather them up and drag them after you. In the Halls of Reflection, be prepared to search for ranged healer or casters, mark them with Skull to tell the DPS to focus only on them at first, and then do a run around the room to gather up the moveable mobs and bear swipe them on the fly and kite them/Feral Charge them into your designated kill target. Make solid use of Growl, because sure as heck if you spend a few seconds gathering up other mobs, the kill target will have time to get off at least one shot on someone else if you’re unwary.

Mostly… have fun in there. It’s a freaking winter wonderland for a Bear tank, and also for a Tree druid.

Mobility is our key strength. It’s our bread and butter. Yes, melee DPS wants us to stand still, and you’re a professional, so do it, and be consistent in how you pull so the other players know if you’re going to be facing the mob, or turning it to put it’s back to your group.

But always be prepared in there to make the fights mobile, to drag them around out of poison and toxic waste and the paths of boulders and wells of souls and gauntlets of adds standing in collapsing tunnels and roomfuls of waking adds and all sorts of other awesomesauce.

I can’t help but feel this was what I was missing. My only regret was in not marking CC targets, and using it in my tactics. I really, really want to do that again. Yes it’s slower… but it always gave me a strong sense of, well, “playing with my food.”

I really miss that. I think I’d like it back.

I hope you’ve had the chance to get in, and to see it all for yourself. I believe that when you do, you won’t be disappointed.

John,

Long time lurker, first time e-mailer.  I loved when you were on the BRK podcast and you were my inspiration to actually roll a Druid.  I am trying to be the best druid I can be, so I am reading everything I can get my hands on.  Main spec is tank, off is resto.  I read something the other day and I had a question.  I decided to throw it your way and see what happens.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11228423378&sid=1

From the post:
=============
Defense
Druid tanks do not need Defense gear.

The Survival of the Fittest talent reduces the chance to be crit by 2/4/6%, which means a Druid tank can achieve uncritable by only taking 3/3 SotF.

However, Defense is not totally worthless. Once you reach ~50% Dodge, due to diminishing returns, stacking Defense actually becomes better then stacking more Dodge.

Begin to stack Defense only after you have reached ~50% Dodge.

Note: Like with Crushing Blows, you must be Defense capped at 400 to be crit immune.

=============

I understand that Crushing Blows are different from Crits.  And maybe this is a stupid question, but is Crit Immune and Uncritable the same thing?  I though that with 3/3 SotF talent you were Crit immune period.  You could walk out there with your bare bear backside (pun intended) and be crit immune.  You do need the defense to be crushing blow immune, and I am ok with that.

Love the blog.  I am in the process of Tattooing the Beginning Wrath tanking guide on my arms.  :)

Urak level 65 Driud on Cenarion Circle