Prot Spec here I com...

OK, with the decision made, some adjustments will need to be made...

With Devastate requiring a 1-handed weapon, Lunar Crescent is of course out of the picture now. I've been toying with the idea of making The Planar Edge anyway for farming purposes (& to get that 1 Blacksmithing point) but the mats for that are something ridiculous... Granted, it's a really good one-handed weapon, but still...

I'll be re-channeling the gathered mats for Lunar Crescent into making the Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer, luckily, still have the Primal Nether in the bank. Will also need to make a start on the quest for the rewards that I need. I've starting grinding the PvP for the Honour needed for the shield.

For the rest of the gear, I think I'll need to identify some interim pieces for those that require drops. Sometimes, you just ain't lucky...

Shoulders:
Warchief's Mantle (Quest Reward: Return to Andormu, Caverns of Time)
Nexus-Guard's Pauldrons (Quest Reward: Success, Netherstorm)

Back:
Cloak of Eternity (Crafted - Tailoring)
Cloak of the Valiant Defender (Quest Reward: Ar'kelos the Guardian, Netherstorm)

Ring:
Protector's Mark of Redemption (Quest Reward: Dissension Among the Ranks, Shadowmoon Valley)
Ring of the Stonebark (Quest Reward: Exorcising the Trees, Blade's Edge Mountains)

Trinket:
Dabiri's Enigma (Quest Reward: Dimensius the All-Devouring, Netherstorm)

Rather than farm for the pattern, I'll probably buy the Felsteel Helm and Felsteel Gloves off the AH.

The final question is the timing of the respec. Staying as Arms makes the PvP easier, so I think I'll try to stay as Arms for as long as possible. However, when there are more calls for instance runs, then I'll respec.

New PvP Gear

Well, most of the focus has been on the new Arena Season 1 gear being available for honour and I've already looked into that. I sort of missed the new honour gear being made available as well until I read some discussion on it in the forum.

So......

Warlock:
Vindicator's Dreadweave Cuffs (11,794 Honour Points, 20 WSG Marks)
(to be gemmed with Veiled Noble Topaz)

Hunter:
Vindicator's Chain Bracers (11,794 Honour Points, 20 WSG Marks)
(to be gemmed with Delicate Living Ruby, slot bonus is not worth it)
Vindicator's Chain Girdle (17,850 Honour Points, 40 AB Marks)
Vindicator's Chain Sabatons (17,850 Honour Points, 40 EotS Marks)
Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph (15,300 Honour Point, 10 EotS Marks)
Sergeant's Heavy Cloak (7,548 Honour Points, 20 AB Marks)

Nothing for the tanking warrior...

The question remains if I should buy these now, since it seems like they will be upgraded as the seasons progress. Nonetheless, the lock cuffs look good enough to buy for now anyway...

Looks like there'll be a lot of PvP happening from now on...

Tanking Basics

This is a nice article on tanking.

One of the things to note is the ability cycle recommended.
Initial Threat: Devastate, Devastate, Devastate, Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate
Normal Cycle: Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate

Eld's Gear

I posted in the warrior forum looking for advise on Prot spec grinding and weapons, seeing as how The Planar Edge is not that great a tanking weapon. I was considering switching to Swordsmith for Fireguard. The following is a reply I got which was really insightful, a rarity in the wow forums.

Well, given I am human, the Fireguard is better over Gromtor's Charge, however, in your case, I would not make the effort for a couple of reasons.

Axe specialization for an Orc is key, stick with the Axe. Gromtor's charge works in
your favor in two ways. One, specialization means you have 5 points in favor of
reducing parry/block. Two, Defense. Given you are arms, your gear probably
hasn't seen a lot of 'pro-defense' and you want to build that up to get
Uncrittable as well as getting serious stamina gear as your expectations will
now be about taking hits and trying to avoid them.

You will also pick up other weapons that will have better defense and stamina, like King's Defender in Chess Event in Karazhan. Now unlike my situation, I am stacked up a bit more on defense, in the 510-512 range for avoidance as well as not fully stacking up on stamina, but taking advantage of agility for dodge and armor. The time it will take you to become a Master Swordsmith will not be worthwhile to get
Fireguard/Blazeguard, more so on the fact if your Tanking gear is defense starved. This is also taking into consideration you putting 5 points into Anticipation to get the extra defense.

Right now, your main focus should be the following:

Stamina - Baseline, get above 10k, 11 to 12k would be better.
Defense - 490 minimum
Avoidance stats - Work on getting Dodge close to 18%, Parry to 15% and Block to 19% overall, pre-buffed. You will find tanking items that will bolster areas.
Strength - Bolsters your attack power which you will need for threat and helps with block value
Agility - Bolsters your crit chance, your dodge and armor which helps in mitigation and threat generation

While +hit would help a lot, your focus is going to be less about worrying about hitting a lot and more about just taking a crapton of hitting or avoiding it. Most fights will involve more about you taking hits, even as an offtank, because most of the mobs are now hitting upwards to 3k+, so more stamina and avoidance better.

On the solo side, I have favored Dual Wielding and DPS gear that is a little higher on +hit and +crit ability. The reason is due to faster rage generation and dumping ability. With fast weapons, in my case, a Blazeguard and Fireguard, Devastate, rend, thunderclap soloing hasn't been a problem with most 70-72 mobs. Elite wise, you will be better off in prot and defensive stance to mitigate the blows and also needing someone to back you up, but normal ones, I was able to fight 3 melee types consecutively with some decent DPS gear.

I don't favor the 2handed weapons mostly because of the slow speed in order to get the big hits and on a miss, that means much more waiting to get rage. Dual Wielding, you can afford a miss or two and still generate rage from another blow. But you also have to have 'fast' weapons. Given Planar Edge is a 2.7 weapon, for main hand, hopefully you will have a fast 2nd hand weapon to do some strikes with the offhand. Between 2handed and your planar edge, it is a toss up which would be better in your case.

70 no. 3

Eld dinged his 70 pretty much in the same manner as Gren, grinding the mobs for Consortium rep... :p

That was the easy part... The tough part to gather the gear he needs starts now...

Site Update

After reading about how to do the Wowhead pop-up window thingy for gear, I've decided to go back and update my links to allow for this and to colour-code the links appropriately. This will be nice for the future, since I'll no longer need to open seperate windows to see the stats itself.

The instructions to do this can be found here. The thing that was not articulated was how to colour-code the item. This seems to be a rather manual process and is done by adding class="qX" to the href hyperlink. X will correspond to the rarity as follows:

• q0 = poor (gray)
• q1 = common (white)
• q2 = uncommon (green)
• q3 = rare (blue)
• q4 = epic (purple)
• q5 = legendary (orange)
• q6 = artifact (yellow)

I've also added in the search box for Wowhead, whose instructions can be found here.

Enchantments Listing

This is a nice listing of enchantments arranged by slots from Wowwiki. Will be useful in planning of enchantments.

Magical 490

The number to aim for when talking about Defense is 490. At 490 Defense, you can (almost) no longer be 'crit' by any mob/boss up to three levels higher than you, which will cover all heroics and raid mobs and bosses.

Generally, you have 350 Defense out of the box, and 20 Defense skill from the Anticipation talent (for both Warrior and Pally Prot trees) so that means you need +120 Defense from gear, which translates to 285 Defense Rating.

If you add up all gear from the list for warrior, you will have 308 Defense Rating, which is an 'overkill'. Of course, this doesn't take into account enchantments and gems. So, it's something to keep in mind to balance out together with the enchants.

The following are enchants that will go on (and can safely be counted towards the 285 required) mainly because there is nothing better to go on that slot.

Head: Glyph of the Defender [+16 Defense Rating, +17 Dodge Rating] (Requires Keepers of Time - Revered)
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of Warding [+15 Dodge Rating, +10 Defense Rating] (Requires Aldor - Exalted)

So, the final number? 258 Defense Rating. Which means we'll have a fair amount of leeway to play with in terms of gear to get more Stamina and Avoidance.

Pitbull and an Update

After reading the comments on forums and websites, I decided to try out Pitbull, as a replacement for XPerl. It's pretty good actually and the amount of customisation is amazing. However, it looks like a heck of a lot of work to get it to look like what I want. XPerl is a lot less effort and although it doesn't look as good, it'll suffice for now.

Finally ran a Heroics daily, which was Sethekk Hall & helped a friend with his druid epic flight quest. Good fun, quite smooth except for an unfortunate wipe at the final boss... Really wish we can get that group together for more heroics runs... I got the Nether which is now in the bank... Will probably hang onto it for now, might need it for Spellthread if I get a good pants upgrade.

Oh, also got Mart's engineering to 375... I made a repair bot but didn't get a skill-up... :p So, in the end, made two flying machines and donated one to the guild bank... lol

Gathering of Tanking Gear

As Eld creeps towards 70, thought I should list out the quests I need to be aware of (with the tanking rewards) so I don't miss them.

Mana-Tombs
Someone Else's Hard Work Pays Off (Feet)

Shadow Labyrinth
The Soul Devices (Bracers)

Shadowmoon Valley
The Cipher of Damnation (Axe)
Dissension Among the Ranks (Ring)

Netherstorm
How to Break into Arcatraz (Waist) - Requires Botanica & Mechanar runs

Will probably look at grinding of PvP for the Season 1 Arena shield (15,000 Honour Points & 20 EotS Marks). Probably less effort than the Exalted Sha'tar shield...

2.3 Released

Well, Blizz released 2.3 on schedule so servers were down last night. I've taken the opportunity to clean out the WTF folder since I haven't done that in awhile. Besides, I'll need to update all my add-ons anyway.

Anyway, list of things to do in 2.3...

All
Go to Dustwallow Marsh and get the new flight point in the Goblin Town

Warlock
Grind for mats for Flying Machine
Grind for the Repair Bot (Gan'arg Analyzers; Blade's Edge Mountain) and Arrow Maker (Sunfury Archers; Netherstorm) recipes

Pally
Relook at the Ret & Prot builds with a number of changes to talents in both trees

Warrior
Relook Talents with the change in Weapon Mastery and Deathwish.
Grind for the Leatherworking Bag Recipe (Ogres in Barrier Hills)
With the change in Tactical Mastery and approaching lvl 70, to relook at maybe Arms Tanking with Mortal Strike
Relook the items to make in light of the new LW receipes

Will also be updating the Rep requirements based on some of the new patterns available.

Epic Belt

Had my first full Heroics run, in Slave Pens and won the Nether with an amazing roll of 100! :)

I ended up buying the Primal Fires on the AH so I've got another upgrade!



You can also see the effect of the new add-on to change the fontset. Needs a bit of experimentation but for now, this font is a vast improvement over the default...

Epic Helm

Finally got a Nether; it dropped of Warp Splinter in normal Bot... Since no one else needed, I finally got my engineering helm made... :)

Quiet Week

Been a quiet week. For whatever reason, had barely had five online for any meaningful run. The exception was the run of Botanica, but that got cut short when Elaina woke up brawling...

Been tinkering a bit more with my UI and I think I like how it looks like now. Nice buttons & a lot cleaner interface. Will be on the lookout for more add-ons... Main thing now is how to improve the 'radar' screen but yet to see something nice.

One last thing is that I've been re-thinking of what to do for my pally in end-game. As it stands, I think we have more than enough tanks but not enough healers. With the itemisation, I think end-game pally healing is quite viable, so this is one area I think I'll explore.