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39 Responses to “Podcast #8: That’s the game you’re tanking”
Interesting Vene…I’ve been lurking here for the summer and learned alot from this site. I guess the point you’re making here is Honey over Vinegar.
I’d like to think that my guild had been doing that for some time. The guild had a Naxx25 run the other day and I couldn’t make it to the start because of other commitments. When I did get online they pst’d me to come help OT Maexxnas (sp?). They had wiped a couple of times but after a bit we did it…with 3 survivors. Congratulations were going around for everyone, MT, DPS, Healers, everybody.
The point is, our Guild Master / Raid Leader had been encouraging us and giving pointers where possible after the wipes. And the satisfaction of actually finishing that boss was something I’m going to remember for a long time even if I wasn’t there for the whole run. If the GM / RL had been harsh and yelling at people…different story entirely.
Gratz on your first(?) Guild 25, don’t let anyone talk you down because “Naxx is so easy” or any of that bullshit, progress at your own level and don’t let anyone steal your good feelings
It was my 1st Nax25, not sure how many others it was their 1st time…
And no, lol, I’m not worried about “Nax is so easy”. Heck, Utgarde keep was hard the 1st time and now I rarely consider it anymore. Everyone starts somewhere.
That is a great point. People keep saying Naxx is for noob… You’re not clearing naxx you noob… Who cares? Not all players started playing at the same time, and not everyone devotes 80 hours a week to this “game”.
I envy you for being able to have an all-guild 25 man team. Me and a few real-life friends have been trying to build a 10 man team in our guild for 2 years. Due to people being sick, children, work, holidays, etc, we never managed to. Pugs suck.
Good points on the healer tank relationship. My main is a Prot warrior however I have a shammy alt and I heal with him quite a bit even in ToGc. I have to say I never get mad at my healers EXCEPT when they don’t move out of stuff!! That is the only thing that pretty much grinds my gears no matter the role or class. Other than that the healer probably has the hardest job of anyone. They are typically underappreciated and arguably have the most responsibility in a raid.
One more thing, I could not agree with you more about the managing people portion of it. I am our raid leader and I go out of my way not to yell at anyone ‘its a game for crying out loud’ even when they do CRAZY stuff. Most of our raiders are adults with jobs and kids and the last thing they want is a harsh raiding envioronment. Despite only doing 25 mans 2 times a week and being casual we have downed all available content in some respect minus Algalon ‘just started on him’ and a few hardmodes on 25 man. It just shows in a good environment even ‘casuals’ can do some great things.
not moving out stuff sucks, but sometimes (as healer) you just gotta take your chances if there is someone about to die…and belive me that tanks tend to drop low at the same moment the volcano spawns under healer ass more often than you might think
You’re so right. I think everyone should try to play healer once in a while. I played it during sunwell days and vanilla naxx and i played tank in wotlk. Both of those roles are very demanding, but both in very different ways. As tank, you pretty much don’t care about anyone else but when you play a healer, your attention is always focused on gird. I mean when i played a shaman(during tbc in sunwell and bt) i always had to focus on so many things…from top of my head: charges of earth shield on tank, totem timers(those had 2min duration only), battle drums cooldown and obviously placing heals as effectively as possible. All that while watching bigwigs for fire not to stand in. Also sometimes, you need to decide whether you will stand in a fire and heal somebody whos about to die or just run and let someone else to decide the poor guy’s faith. So yeah its pretty complex. But its A LOT of fun. The satisfaction when you save tank with nature’s swiftness feels pretty good. So yeah, respect your healres ;] They really do all they can do play as good as possible (or at least most of the time :D)
I agree 100% on the social aspect. I’ve led raids where the people doing it are undergeared for it, (actually undergeared, not just what the perception of undergeared is) and we go through it just fine because we have that synergy and positive environment that allows everyone to play to the fullest. Hell, even on nights where we are doing nothing but banging our head into the wall, we still have that vibe and I can’t recall a night which ended in a bad mood.
And its simple to do as well. As Vene said, not pointing the finger and keeping your own cool helps pass that mood onto your raiders. Having a great group of people is the core of any successful guild. Downing bosses, seeing content, and getting new gear pales in comparison to having a good time with great people.
I’m totally agree as well, nothing feels better than ending a run on a good note after having many laughs during it.
One of our guild healers can be a tad scatter-brained, but always gives us a good chuckle while we wipe so we tend to forgive her. We all raid casually and most of us are older, so its more about having a good time. New gear and clearing content is just extra gravy for us.
Healing, to me, is the funnest job from a personal aspect, but it’s the most thankless job. No one cares about what you do unless someone dies. But, it’s still the most interactive job in this game, especially if you’re raid healing. You haven’t experienced fun until you’ve raid healed twins.
One thing about your section on +hit gear…I was under the impression that taunt used melee hit, so it is “hit capped” at 8%. That is why the glyph of taunt is set at 8%.
If you have the glyph, you shouldn’t miss a taunt…period. You don’t need hit rating on top of that.
Taunt is classified as a spell. So it uses the spell hit table.
So not only do you need glyph of taunt, but you also need a fair amount of hit rating on your gear (depending on whether you’ve got a shadow priest or not) to get taunt hit capped.
“Applying these formulas gives the following base miss rate for a Level 80 character with a 400 Weapon Skill:
v. Level 80 mob: 5.0% / dual-wield: 24%
v. Level 81 mob: 5.2% / dual-wield: 24.2%
v. Level 82 mob: 5.4% / dual-wield: 24.4%
v. Level 83 mob: 8.0% / dual-wield: 27%”
So, you see, taunt uses melee hit (not spell hit) and you only need 8% hit to cap melee, therefore, the glyph of taunt requires NO additional +hit in order to be hit capped.
About the only thing I think hit is good for is tanking trash, I mean really, Shockwave and thunderclap can’t be dodged or parried only missed, as for single target tanking I really don’t care about hit at all, all the gear has so much expertise on it, threat shouldn’t really be a problem.
Great podcast vene. I love the strong message about people.
On the topic of trinkets quickly: I am really struggling with my trinkets. I’m currently using Heart of Iron + Juggernauts Vitality, and i’m really having a hard time justifying the loss of Heart of Iron (162 stam) for Glyph of Indomitability (1729 armour). I was considering switching it out last night for 25 man TotGC Northrend Beasts, as Gormok was hitting me for an absolute metric tonne, but I just couldn’t justify to myself losing the mass amount of HP, when I was already getting such huge spike damage from impales + normal melee swings, and going from full hp to dead in 0.5 seconds.
That’s why You should use Glyph. Because it mitigates that damage (from Impale’s hits and ticks too). Sattori (or Satrina, can’t remember now) made some easy calculation, when it’s better to use stam (even Black Heart) trinket and when Glyph (both in fights with physical damage ofc). For most, already geared tanks, Glyph is a lot better.
Glyph is -awesome- on beasts. Try it out, and try stacking as many other +armour items as you can. An indestructable potion on top for the last 2 minutes of the Gormok phase, and you’ll be laughing.
The go back and compare how much damage you were taking from impales the week before. I’ve seen tanks take an average impale damage of 30k. I take 20k.
Impale, Normal swing, and bleed tick (assuming you’ve got a bubble on) is comfortably survivable when done properly.
I hit 80 on my protection warrior last month. My brother signed up under RAF and granted me free levels until I hit 60. WotLK still being new and shiny, I never got a chance to tank in Outlands. The first instance I tanked was regular Nexus and man, I was beyond awful.
I pushed on to 80 with a wee bit more tank experience under my belt, but still struggled even on regular 80 dungeons. Looking for a solid gear guide I stumbled onto your site and found so much more.
I gotta say, I love this blog. Not only did you offer excellent advice for someone completely clueless about tanking but I find as my skill level as a tank improves, your articles are still laced with tasty nuggets of truth. And somehow you manage to give these out in a manner that eschews cold calculation tables and forum flames to deliver advice that has the tone of an encouraging suggestion with calm rationale to back it up. Writing that can be as useful to both rookies and pros is top notch stuff and it’s good to see a column with such humble and expert advice. Keep up the good work!
PS: Feeling I missed something important, I’m leveling a new prot warrior the ol’ fashioned way. Finally soloed Cyclonian and heading to Maraudon next!
I can feel your pain man! Nexus is a pain for me as well, honestly, I’ve somewhat avoided it after a bad experience on reg. Remember this, sometimes a run just has it in for you. Sometimes, for whatever reason, you’re going to really struggle with a certain run. Don’t let it get you down. Move on to something else. After an initial bad experience in Nexus, I went and tanked UK again (back at like 72 or something, all reg runs), just to get the confidence back. UK is sort of one of those confidence runs for me, picks me up after a bad experience.
Keep your head up, and try and learn from what goes wrong. I too have only been 80 on my prot warrior for about a month, but last night I was tanking (and leading) Ulduar 10. Just pay attention to what’s happening, try and learn from everything, and most important, practice, practice, practice. With the current badge set-up, you’ll easily have the gear well before you’re mentally ready, I can’t say it enough, more than anything you just need practice.
I’ve found that as a tank it’s much more about the player than the gear, and the player only gets good through repetition (and research).
This is so true. I always dreaded tanking HoS because of the multiple wave encounter w/ Brann. Healing it is easy but tanking it is a nightmare with DPS going crazy and waves coming faster and faster. The other day I did it and thanks to Warbringer and tips in from Vene about wisely using Thunderclap, proper CD rotation, Shockwave and Taunt my PuG group was able to finish it. On top of it all the DPS congratulated me on how well I handled that encounter. It felt really good and is a testament to how much I’ve learned from this site.
Not to ignore the first 2 points of the podcast but I just wanted to comment on the last subject of “tank/healer relationship”.
As a main tank healer 90% of the time (Vene’s) I have to totally agree with you. A healer and a tank that can communicate without the yelling will generally increase the productivity of a raid. Tension in a raid is never good, so if there is an occasion when a healer needs to be yelled at… ONE person in private chat is the way to go and not everyone sending a whisper or calling them out in raid chat.
As a healer, we know when we screw up and will generally apologize before the tank has a chance to check his combat log. Most of the time, if the tank dies so does his healer, therefore, we don’t want to see you die either!
I reckon putting on a Taunt glyph (swapping it in and taking it off afterward) is better than carrying a hit set, unless you wanna increase DPS on a fight where you take less damage. But in ToGC Heroic you would want to stay in survival stuff and just glyph for Taunt fights, imo.
Vene and I had been talking via email and he went over a lot of it in the Podcast, but its discomforting to lose hit, and I think that is why I see some tanks Gemming for it. I just built a set and ignored Hit, for maximum survival. I will glyph when I need to Taunt, and I have a scribe to keep me well-stocked.
As to being a healer, i’ve healed before, but not at 80. I dislike healing because it is boring unless the shit hits the fan, not because it isn’t important. To me it is a very important part of raiding and I have respect for anyone who chooses that path. It is an often thankless job that takes a certain kind of person to do well. I’ve witnessed a lot of friends switch to healing specs/class and just not “get it” and give up on it.
Sometimes they let us die, sometimes we let people die. I never try to rub someone’s face in it, so much as figure out what went wrong to fix it. Such is raiding… unless you are in one of those finger-pointing, /gkick for mistakes, asshole-filled guilds.
When healing is ‘boring’ you’ve got too many healers. Make them go DPS.
The same thing applies when healing heroics. I haven’t been playing my shaman long, but I’m already ‘healing’ heroics as elemental, so I can help kill things better because the extra healing power through talents just isn’t needed.
My first character was a tank, then a Paladin, and that lead me to want to kill things fast. Remember Vanilla when a Paladin could kill anything? It would just take him all day to do so. When pally buffs lasted 5 min and there really were no addons to help? I made a rogue but then got jealous of those casters. For years I played a mage and would push the tank to the limit, sometimes at my own expense. I had alpha tested BC, and when I leveled a shaman in my off time it was doing damage. One day the heal lead asked me to go resto and help the group out by healing. Oh My! This was something I never expected. And I was terrible at the job. I stunk, but was so intrigued by the complexity of this daunting task … I learned.
Healing is an Art.
There are no set rules, there are no set techniques. You are on your own. No spell rotation, or button order to it. Which heal, to whom, and when? Notice one thing about healers, and it also applies to other classes, but never as much as to healers. One healer in moderate gear, can out perform another of the same class in “uber” gear. Why?
Healing is an Art.
Look at the statistics. Yes, there is lots of overhealing (Especially with those giant healing stream totems we call Druids), but the folks that save you in that time of need are usually fairly high on the healing charts. Druids will top the chart with Priest next, followed by Shamans; normally.
Look at those charts and you will see a breaking point. Half the healers sit below the ledge about 66% (or lower) than the top of the chart. If you have no ledge, then your healers are all above that ledge or below it.
That “ledge” is a magical indicator. Those above it are Artist. They have spent long hours at their job and know their tools, and what they can do. They anticipate and hit with the best they have for the time they have. The ones below the ledge will eventual rise above, if they keep at it.
Just like tanking. Tanking shows the same profile. Not as noticeable on the charts but it is there. Healers KNOW who the real tanks are. No one knows better. Our lives are about saving people. When someone dies, it hurts us. When we were so stubborn to try to save the caster, that cannot stay out of trouble, while letting the raid wipe … we say never again. But the next fight we cannot stand that health bar going down to zero and against our deepest desires we try the best we can to keep them alive. Their death hurts us. When I am keeping my TANK (the real deal) up as he is waning, the rest of the raid be damned, including myself. I am a Shaman. With haste over 900, the best I can do is a 1.2 second cast for a fairly small heal in my arsenal. When my old and slow butt is standing in fire casting that spell, it is because people are dying and it is now or never. I might even make it (NOT).
I don’t dps, and won’t. I don’t PvP. I heal raids. That is what I do. I only know the fights by who and how much when. Heals are not cookie cutter. That heal that landed on you was of a certain amount. It took time to cast, and cost mana. A healer somewhere, had to decide which heal to deliver, how to deliver it, and if you were worth it. Every heal is a compliment to our raiding partners. Of course, the tanks get most of our adoration.
PS - If you have good healers, heals will be hitting you the moment you get aggro, sometimes before the mob hits you. It is a gamble.
I have tanked and healed toc10 and 25. (holy/disc priest) Its a very interesting point of view that you get when you heal. I actually started off as a healer in vanilla tanked in BC and now play both types of classes in wrath. The healer is basically playing “whackamole” with the bars, but they are worried about their mana running out or not healing a top dpser and letting them die.. They know what they are doing. I insert some comments and advice because i have healed. But at least when i give suggestions, the healers listen for teh most part. =D
Right now, we’re trying to get past beasts in ToGC25. I’m telling you… when you are seeing 15ks, 20ks and 30ks of damage roll up your monitor when you are tanking Gormok, thank the heavens that you have a good healer healing you. Even so, if you aren’t topped off and not doing your part to help the healers, you can easily be ONE OR TWO SHOT with 50k+ buffed health. Pally tanks don’t have as big of a problem with him (and that is another story), but DKs also can be splat by him if they don’t use all of the mitigation CDs that they have.
I agree that you don´t need the hit. However I started tanking 4 out of 5 encounters in 10man heroic colliseum with dual hit trinkets.
Why? Because I am the one who has to interrupt and stun and sometimes missing in one of these moments means almost a wipe. I believe if you are aiming for the 50 trys left you should seriously consider capping your hit.
So let´s look at the Colliseum encounter:
Northend Beast: Ok, no hit, just stay alive.
Lord Jaraxus: Here I interrupt 100% of the casts. Why? because I can and I have nothing to do anyways. Jaraxus hits like a girl and given you are running mostly in 245s your life is never really in danger. I would estimate 95% of wipes to losing a dps and/or as a result the dps not geting the portals/adds down. So even even you´re raiding with 6 rogues, let them focus on dpsing the portals and do the interrupting yourself.
Faction Champion: Ok so my duty is to cc/interupt/stun the non druid Healer. I do this as protection in protection gear. It really does not matter at all if you have 50k or 40k hp because you will be the very last one to die anyways. So there is absoluty no reason for one of you´re abilites to miss. Switch in your trinkets, even if you don´t do it anywhere else, at Faction Champs it is really just lazy not to.
Twins: Hmhm Ok so twins is meh. In theory there will be someone else to interupt. In theory. But can remember more than one kill, where we lost the last other interupter towards the end of the fight and still managed to get the shield down. . And then you will be so happy knowing that your interupt is going to land. There are few things more frustrating than missing in this very moment
Anub: Oooh Anub, how many times did I face the tribute chest only to miss in the most unfortunate situation
I ten man, you really don´t need the block set and i doubt a lot of people have it anyways. However there is no need to run around with 50k hp in p3. So get those hit trinkets. For many, 1 will be enough (lvl82 adds). Everytime you get a miss on shadowstrike someone will die und you will wipe. Everytime your first style on one of the adds misses, your Healer will die and you will wipe. During an sucessful 1 burrow phase try you will ancounter 6-8 adds and ~6 shadowstrikes. Are you really taking 4% miss chance for every single of these? You´re redusing your chances für the chest tremendously
And again, don´t rely on youre dps to trick/kick for you. Anub hast a very high dps requirement. DPS need to dps as hard as thay can. Help them by doing the rest youself.
I repaet myself again and again. In 10man hero it is not the tank that is going to die. You will wipe bcause you will lose dps or dps can´t keep up. Once your gear has it, and given how easy it is to get it, you are no longer the one whose life is in greatest danger. You can affort to switch trinkets in! Consider it.
All this does not apply for 25man heroics or anything else, But for ToGC 10 i can only recommend it.
Besides which, if you’ve got -enough- health for the encounter, why not do more damage? Kill things a bit quicker and a bit more reliably so there’s less time for someone to stand in the fire.
There’s really no reason to do 2500 DPS with 20k HP that you never, ever use as a buffer, when you could be doing 3000 DPS.
I completely agree with the comments made about the social part of the game. It is so frustrating to hear people yell at each other over vent DURING a boss fight. I have the greatest respect for healers and I think they have the heardest job in the raid.
They have to not only keep the tanks up, but the raid, and themselves if the tank goes down. From an OT viewpoint, I can help myself with ER and because hebrlist, LB. But it sure is nice to see a bubble pop up around you when SW and LS are on cool down..
Woot! After a long wait, Vene finally do another Podcast! I’m so agreed with the tank-healer relationship and the social perspective of the game. Am currently been lvling a healer alt prior to this podcast just so I’ll learn the different side of the game. Imho, healers should get the respect they deserve. Most of the time, they sacrifice themselves for the raid to survive.
Okay. Far too lazy to read all the posts.
Firstly. Yay for the Podcast! MORE MORE MORE!
Second. I’m glad that someone is talking about the other side of the fence and how it affects us. I became a big believer in learning the other sides of the triangle to improve how I tank, and how I interact. I’m currently working on a pally healer (mostly because people said they’re hard to play, I just like proving people wrong).
Anyways. Awesome podcast. Bring more on!!!
Long time lurker and tank. I’ve played both a healer and a tank and I seem to be in the minority here. I hear tanks saying that they don’t care about who dies? As raid lead and main tank, majority of the deaths I take as a personal failing for not either taunting, intervening properly or directing people properly. Obviously ADD McFailPants standing in fire is one thing, but I worry bout everyone surviving.
I’ve also developed strong relationships with all my heals. It’s a running joke that I’m a dead tank when farming because I don’t watch my health bar if the hits are below 10k One of my heals has been keeping me vertical for a couple years and it’s nice when I think that he’s the best druid healer and that he thinks the same of my tanking. And I have the same rapport with my disc priest as well. Confidence without arrogance makes everyone play better.
Go out there and get to know your heals! Respect them and they’ll keep you vertical.
I was really happy to hear the last part about healers and you. Healing can be very stressful and, like tanking, give that rush. Being the paladin that I am, I’ve lived a little of both worlds. Letting someone die really gets to you sometimes, as does saving someone. Tanking for so long, then jumping into raids to heal, you really understand both sides of the field. I know personally I’ve let a dps die to save you! Or even die to get a heal off for you!
But honestly Vene, great podcast, and another great post. I love going over your past stuff, and keeping up with the new stuff.
Thanks!
P.S: Vene does have a strong point guys, respect your team. Without them you are nothing.
Hi Vene,
Thanks for this podcast. It’s been an totally rewarding experience changing how I interact with my healers and the rest of the raid in general after listening to this episode of your podcast.
We’ve applied this attitude to all the groups in a raid and where are teamwork was strong and effective before has improved to new levels of cooperation that are giving us a real edge on each encounter.
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November 11th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Interesting Vene…I’ve been lurking here for the summer and learned alot from this site. I guess the point you’re making here is Honey over Vinegar.
I’d like to think that my guild had been doing that for some time. The guild had a Naxx25 run the other day and I couldn’t make it to the start because of other commitments. When I did get online they pst’d me to come help OT Maexxnas (sp?). They had wiped a couple of times but after a bit we did it…with 3 survivors. Congratulations were going around for everyone, MT, DPS, Healers, everybody.
The point is, our Guild Master / Raid Leader had been encouraging us and giving pointers where possible after the wipes. And the satisfaction of actually finishing that boss was something I’m going to remember for a long time even if I wasn’t there for the whole run. If the GM / RL had been harsh and yelling at people…different story entirely.
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Vivilros reply on November 11, 2009 4:50 pm:
Gratz on your first(?) Guild 25, don’t let anyone talk you down because “Naxx is so easy” or any of that bullshit, progress at your own level and don’t let anyone steal your good feelings
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Castellan reply on November 11, 2009 8:24 pm:
Thanks Vivilros…
It was my 1st Nax25, not sure how many others it was their 1st time…
And no, lol, I’m not worried about “Nax is so easy”. Heck, Utgarde keep was hard the 1st time and now I rarely consider it anymore. Everyone starts somewhere.
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Celanos reply on December 14, 2009 2:17 pm:
That is a great point. People keep saying Naxx is for noob… You’re not clearing naxx you noob… Who cares? Not all players started playing at the same time, and not everyone devotes 80 hours a week to this “game”.
I envy you for being able to have an all-guild 25 man team. Me and a few real-life friends have been trying to build a 10 man team in our guild for 2 years. Due to people being sick, children, work, holidays, etc, we never managed to. Pugs suck.
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November 11th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Good points on the healer tank relationship. My main is a Prot warrior however I have a shammy alt and I heal with him quite a bit even in ToGc. I have to say I never get mad at my healers EXCEPT when they don’t move out of stuff!! That is the only thing that pretty much grinds my gears no matter the role or class. Other than that the healer probably has the hardest job of anyone. They are typically underappreciated and arguably have the most responsibility in a raid.
One more thing, I could not agree with you more about the managing people portion of it. I am our raid leader and I go out of my way not to yell at anyone ‘its a game for crying out loud’ even when they do CRAZY stuff. Most of our raiders are adults with jobs and kids and the last thing they want is a harsh raiding envioronment. Despite only doing 25 mans 2 times a week and being casual we have downed all available content in some respect minus Algalon ‘just started on him’ and a few hardmodes on 25 man. It just shows in a good environment even ‘casuals’ can do some great things.
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Seeman reply on November 11, 2009 2:48 pm:
not moving out stuff sucks, but sometimes (as healer) you just gotta take your chances if there is someone about to die…and belive me that tanks tend to drop low at the same moment the volcano spawns under healer ass more often than you might think
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November 11th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
You’re so right. I think everyone should try to play healer once in a while. I played it during sunwell days and vanilla naxx and i played tank in wotlk. Both of those roles are very demanding, but both in very different ways. As tank, you pretty much don’t care about anyone else but when you play a healer, your attention is always focused on gird. I mean when i played a shaman(during tbc in sunwell and bt) i always had to focus on so many things…from top of my head: charges of earth shield on tank, totem timers(those had 2min duration only), battle drums cooldown and obviously placing heals as effectively as possible. All that while watching bigwigs for fire not to stand in. Also sometimes, you need to decide whether you will stand in a fire and heal somebody whos about to die or just run and let someone else to decide the poor guy’s faith. So yeah its pretty complex. But its A LOT of fun. The satisfaction when you save tank with nature’s swiftness feels pretty good. So yeah, respect your healres ;] They really do all they can do play as good as possible (or at least most of the time :D)
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November 11th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I agree 100% on the social aspect. I’ve led raids where the people doing it are undergeared for it, (actually undergeared, not just what the perception of undergeared is) and we go through it just fine because we have that synergy and positive environment that allows everyone to play to the fullest. Hell, even on nights where we are doing nothing but banging our head into the wall, we still have that vibe and I can’t recall a night which ended in a bad mood.
And its simple to do as well. As Vene said, not pointing the finger and keeping your own cool helps pass that mood onto your raiders. Having a great group of people is the core of any successful guild. Downing bosses, seeing content, and getting new gear pales in comparison to having a good time with great people.
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November 11th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I’m totally agree as well, nothing feels better than ending a run on a good note after having many laughs during it.
One of our guild healers can be a tad scatter-brained, but always gives us a good chuckle while we wipe so we tend to forgive her. We all raid casually and most of us are older, so its more about having a good time. New gear and clearing content is just extra gravy for us.
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November 11th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Healing, to me, is the funnest job from a personal aspect, but it’s the most thankless job. No one cares about what you do unless someone dies. But, it’s still the most interactive job in this game, especially if you’re raid healing. You haven’t experienced fun until you’ve raid healed twins.
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November 11th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
One thing about your section on +hit gear…I was under the impression that taunt used melee hit, so it is “hit capped” at 8%. That is why the glyph of taunt is set at 8%.
If you have the glyph, you shouldn’t miss a taunt…period. You don’t need hit rating on top of that.
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Kavtor reply on November 11, 2009 5:07 pm:
Taunt is classified as a spell. So it uses the spell hit table.
So not only do you need glyph of taunt, but you also need a fair amount of hit rating on your gear (depending on whether you’ve got a shadow priest or not) to get taunt hit capped.
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Veneretio reply on November 11, 2009 5:24 pm:
17% Spell Hit = 446 Hit rating. 9% Spell Hit = 236 Hit rating.
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Gathorc reply on November 12, 2009 7:21 am:
According to wowwiki:
“Some mobs (most Bosses in particular) are immune to taunt. Non-immune mobs must be hit by the Taunt using standard melee hit mechanics.”
source: http://www.wowwiki.com/Taunt_(Warrior_ability)
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Gathorc reply on November 12, 2009 7:24 am:
Also according to wowwiki:
“Applying these formulas gives the following base miss rate for a Level 80 character with a 400 Weapon Skill:
v. Level 80 mob: 5.0% / dual-wield: 24%
v. Level 81 mob: 5.2% / dual-wield: 24.2%
v. Level 82 mob: 5.4% / dual-wield: 24.4%
v. Level 83 mob: 8.0% / dual-wield: 27%”
source: http://www.wowwiki.com/Hit
So, you see, taunt uses melee hit (not spell hit) and you only need 8% hit to cap melee, therefore, the glyph of taunt requires NO additional +hit in order to be hit capped.
Veneretio reply on November 12, 2009 3:03 pm:
Here’s the Tankspot thread where it was tested and confirmed that Taunt requires 17% Spell Hit: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/50984-taunt-mechanics-guide-discussion.html
Gathorc reply on November 12, 2009 8:20 am:
Okay, on further research, it would appear that wowwiki is wrong.
My bad
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November 11th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
About the only thing I think hit is good for is tanking trash, I mean really, Shockwave and thunderclap can’t be dodged or parried only missed, as for single target tanking I really don’t care about hit at all, all the gear has so much expertise on it, threat shouldn’t really be a problem.
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mister six reply on November 12, 2009 1:00 pm:
I’m less concerned about threat or even missed taunts than I am about enrage timers.
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November 11th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Great podcast vene. I love the strong message about people.
On the topic of trinkets quickly: I am really struggling with my trinkets. I’m currently using Heart of Iron + Juggernauts Vitality, and i’m really having a hard time justifying the loss of Heart of Iron (162 stam) for Glyph of Indomitability (1729 armour). I was considering switching it out last night for 25 man TotGC Northrend Beasts, as Gormok was hitting me for an absolute metric tonne, but I just couldn’t justify to myself losing the mass amount of HP, when I was already getting such huge spike damage from impales + normal melee swings, and going from full hp to dead in 0.5 seconds.
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Furiat/Vege reply on November 12, 2009 5:26 am:
That’s why You should use Glyph. Because it mitigates that damage (from Impale’s hits and ticks too). Sattori (or Satrina, can’t remember now) made some easy calculation, when it’s better to use stam (even Black Heart) trinket and when Glyph (both in fights with physical damage ofc). For most, already geared tanks, Glyph is a lot better.
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Kavtor reply on November 12, 2009 9:41 am:
Glyph is -awesome- on beasts. Try it out, and try stacking as many other +armour items as you can. An indestructable potion on top for the last 2 minutes of the Gormok phase, and you’ll be laughing.
The go back and compare how much damage you were taking from impales the week before. I’ve seen tanks take an average impale damage of 30k. I take 20k.
Impale, Normal swing, and bleed tick (assuming you’ve got a bubble on) is comfortably survivable when done properly.
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November 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I hit 80 on my protection warrior last month. My brother signed up under RAF and granted me free levels until I hit 60. WotLK still being new and shiny, I never got a chance to tank in Outlands. The first instance I tanked was regular Nexus and man, I was beyond awful.
I pushed on to 80 with a wee bit more tank experience under my belt, but still struggled even on regular 80 dungeons. Looking for a solid gear guide I stumbled onto your site and found so much more.
I gotta say, I love this blog. Not only did you offer excellent advice for someone completely clueless about tanking but I find as my skill level as a tank improves, your articles are still laced with tasty nuggets of truth. And somehow you manage to give these out in a manner that eschews cold calculation tables and forum flames to deliver advice that has the tone of an encouraging suggestion with calm rationale to back it up. Writing that can be as useful to both rookies and pros is top notch stuff and it’s good to see a column with such humble and expert advice. Keep up the good work!
PS: Feeling I missed something important, I’m leveling a new prot warrior the ol’ fashioned way. Finally soloed Cyclonian and heading to Maraudon next!
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Wiredude reply on November 12, 2009 6:19 am:
I can feel your pain man! Nexus is a pain for me as well, honestly, I’ve somewhat avoided it after a bad experience on reg. Remember this, sometimes a run just has it in for you. Sometimes, for whatever reason, you’re going to really struggle with a certain run. Don’t let it get you down. Move on to something else. After an initial bad experience in Nexus, I went and tanked UK again (back at like 72 or something, all reg runs), just to get the confidence back. UK is sort of one of those confidence runs for me, picks me up after a bad experience.
Keep your head up, and try and learn from what goes wrong. I too have only been 80 on my prot warrior for about a month, but last night I was tanking (and leading) Ulduar 10. Just pay attention to what’s happening, try and learn from everything, and most important, practice, practice, practice. With the current badge set-up, you’ll easily have the gear well before you’re mentally ready, I can’t say it enough, more than anything you just need practice.
I’ve found that as a tank it’s much more about the player than the gear, and the player only gets good through repetition (and research).
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Cornfedhick reply on November 12, 2009 9:52 am:
This is so true. I always dreaded tanking HoS because of the multiple wave encounter w/ Brann. Healing it is easy but tanking it is a nightmare with DPS going crazy and waves coming faster and faster. The other day I did it and thanks to Warbringer and tips in from Vene about wisely using Thunderclap, proper CD rotation, Shockwave and Taunt my PuG group was able to finish it. On top of it all the DPS congratulated me on how well I handled that encounter. It felt really good and is a testament to how much I’ve learned from this site.
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November 11th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Not to ignore the first 2 points of the podcast but I just wanted to comment on the last subject of “tank/healer relationship”.
As a main tank healer 90% of the time (Vene’s) I have to totally agree with you. A healer and a tank that can communicate without the yelling will generally increase the productivity of a raid. Tension in a raid is never good, so if there is an occasion when a healer needs to be yelled at… ONE person in private chat is the way to go and not everyone sending a whisper or calling them out in raid chat.
As a healer, we know when we screw up and will generally apologize before the tank has a chance to check his combat log. Most of the time, if the tank dies so does his healer, therefore, we don’t want to see you die either!
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November 11th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
I reckon putting on a Taunt glyph (swapping it in and taking it off afterward) is better than carrying a hit set, unless you wanna increase DPS on a fight where you take less damage. But in ToGC Heroic you would want to stay in survival stuff and just glyph for Taunt fights, imo.
Vene and I had been talking via email and he went over a lot of it in the Podcast, but its discomforting to lose hit, and I think that is why I see some tanks Gemming for it. I just built a set and ignored Hit, for maximum survival. I will glyph when I need to Taunt, and I have a scribe to keep me well-stocked.
As to being a healer, i’ve healed before, but not at 80. I dislike healing because it is boring unless the shit hits the fan, not because it isn’t important. To me it is a very important part of raiding and I have respect for anyone who chooses that path. It is an often thankless job that takes a certain kind of person to do well. I’ve witnessed a lot of friends switch to healing specs/class and just not “get it” and give up on it.
Sometimes they let us die, sometimes we let people die. I never try to rub someone’s face in it, so much as figure out what went wrong to fix it. Such is raiding… unless you are in one of those finger-pointing, /gkick for mistakes, asshole-filled guilds.
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Kavtor reply on November 12, 2009 9:45 am:
When healing is ‘boring’ you’ve got too many healers. Make them go DPS.
The same thing applies when healing heroics. I haven’t been playing my shaman long, but I’m already ‘healing’ heroics as elemental, so I can help kill things better because the extra healing power through talents just isn’t needed.
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November 11th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
I am a healer.
My first character was a tank, then a Paladin, and that lead me to want to kill things fast. Remember Vanilla when a Paladin could kill anything? It would just take him all day to do so. When pally buffs lasted 5 min and there really were no addons to help? I made a rogue but then got jealous of those casters. For years I played a mage and would push the tank to the limit, sometimes at my own expense. I had alpha tested BC, and when I leveled a shaman in my off time it was doing damage. One day the heal lead asked me to go resto and help the group out by healing. Oh My! This was something I never expected. And I was terrible at the job. I stunk, but was so intrigued by the complexity of this daunting task … I learned.
Healing is an Art.
There are no set rules, there are no set techniques. You are on your own. No spell rotation, or button order to it. Which heal, to whom, and when? Notice one thing about healers, and it also applies to other classes, but never as much as to healers. One healer in moderate gear, can out perform another of the same class in “uber” gear. Why?
Healing is an Art.
Look at the statistics. Yes, there is lots of overhealing (Especially with those giant healing stream totems we call Druids), but the folks that save you in that time of need are usually fairly high on the healing charts. Druids will top the chart with Priest next, followed by Shamans; normally.
Look at those charts and you will see a breaking point. Half the healers sit below the ledge about 66% (or lower) than the top of the chart. If you have no ledge, then your healers are all above that ledge or below it.
That “ledge” is a magical indicator. Those above it are Artist. They have spent long hours at their job and know their tools, and what they can do. They anticipate and hit with the best they have for the time they have. The ones below the ledge will eventual rise above, if they keep at it.
Just like tanking. Tanking shows the same profile. Not as noticeable on the charts but it is there. Healers KNOW who the real tanks are. No one knows better. Our lives are about saving people. When someone dies, it hurts us. When we were so stubborn to try to save the caster, that cannot stay out of trouble, while letting the raid wipe … we say never again. But the next fight we cannot stand that health bar going down to zero and against our deepest desires we try the best we can to keep them alive. Their death hurts us. When I am keeping my TANK (the real deal) up as he is waning, the rest of the raid be damned, including myself. I am a Shaman. With haste over 900, the best I can do is a 1.2 second cast for a fairly small heal in my arsenal. When my old and slow butt is standing in fire casting that spell, it is because people are dying and it is now or never. I might even make it (NOT).
I don’t dps, and won’t. I don’t PvP. I heal raids. That is what I do. I only know the fights by who and how much when. Heals are not cookie cutter. That heal that landed on you was of a certain amount. It took time to cast, and cost mana. A healer somewhere, had to decide which heal to deliver, how to deliver it, and if you were worth it. Every heal is a compliment to our raiding partners. Of course, the tanks get most of our adoration.
PS - If you have good healers, heals will be hitting you the moment you get aggro, sometimes before the mob hits you. It is a gamble.
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November 12th, 2009 at 2:58 am
I have tanked and healed toc10 and 25. (holy/disc priest) Its a very interesting point of view that you get when you heal. I actually started off as a healer in vanilla tanked in BC and now play both types of classes in wrath. The healer is basically playing “whackamole” with the bars, but they are worried about their mana running out or not healing a top dpser and letting them die.. They know what they are doing. I insert some comments and advice because i have healed. But at least when i give suggestions, the healers listen for teh most part. =D
Right now, we’re trying to get past beasts in ToGC25. I’m telling you… when you are seeing 15ks, 20ks and 30ks of damage roll up your monitor when you are tanking Gormok, thank the heavens that you have a good healer healing you. Even so, if you aren’t topped off and not doing your part to help the healers, you can easily be ONE OR TWO SHOT with 50k+ buffed health. Pally tanks don’t have as big of a problem with him (and that is another story), but DKs also can be splat by him if they don’t use all of the mitigation CDs that they have.
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November 12th, 2009 at 6:44 am
I agree that you don´t need the hit. However I started tanking 4 out of 5 encounters in 10man heroic colliseum with dual hit trinkets.
Why? Because I am the one who has to interrupt and stun and sometimes missing in one of these moments means almost a wipe. I believe if you are aiming for the 50 trys left you should seriously consider capping your hit.
So let´s look at the Colliseum encounter:
Northend Beast: Ok, no hit, just stay alive.
Lord Jaraxus: Here I interrupt 100% of the casts. Why? because I can and I have nothing to do anyways. Jaraxus hits like a girl and given you are running mostly in 245s your life is never really in danger. I would estimate 95% of wipes to losing a dps and/or as a result the dps not geting the portals/adds down. So even even you´re raiding with 6 rogues, let them focus on dpsing the portals and do the interrupting yourself.
Faction Champion: Ok so my duty is to cc/interupt/stun the non druid Healer. I do this as protection in protection gear. It really does not matter at all if you have 50k or 40k hp because you will be the very last one to die anyways. So there is absoluty no reason for one of you´re abilites to miss. Switch in your trinkets, even if you don´t do it anywhere else, at Faction Champs it is really just lazy not to.
Twins: Hmhm Ok so twins is meh. In theory there will be someone else to interupt. In theory. But can remember more than one kill, where we lost the last other interupter towards the end of the fight and still managed to get the shield down. . And then you will be so happy knowing that your interupt is going to land. There are few things more frustrating than missing in this very moment
Anub: Oooh Anub, how many times did I face the tribute chest only to miss in the most unfortunate situation
I ten man, you really don´t need the block set and i doubt a lot of people have it anyways. However there is no need to run around with 50k hp in p3. So get those hit trinkets. For many, 1 will be enough (lvl82 adds). Everytime you get a miss on shadowstrike someone will die und you will wipe. Everytime your first style on one of the adds misses, your Healer will die and you will wipe. During an sucessful 1 burrow phase try you will ancounter 6-8 adds and ~6 shadowstrikes. Are you really taking 4% miss chance for every single of these? You´re redusing your chances für the chest tremendously
And again, don´t rely on youre dps to trick/kick for you. Anub hast a very high dps requirement. DPS need to dps as hard as thay can. Help them by doing the rest youself.
I repaet myself again and again. In 10man hero it is not the tank that is going to die. You will wipe bcause you will lose dps or dps can´t keep up. Once your gear has it, and given how easy it is to get it, you are no longer the one whose life is in greatest danger. You can affort to switch trinkets in! Consider it.
All this does not apply for 25man heroics or anything else, But for ToGC 10 i can only recommend it.
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Kavtor reply on November 12, 2009 9:50 am:
Besides which, if you’ve got -enough- health for the encounter, why not do more damage? Kill things a bit quicker and a bit more reliably so there’s less time for someone to stand in the fire.
There’s really no reason to do 2500 DPS with 20k HP that you never, ever use as a buffer, when you could be doing 3000 DPS.
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November 12th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
I completely agree with the comments made about the social part of the game. It is so frustrating to hear people yell at each other over vent DURING a boss fight. I have the greatest respect for healers and I think they have the heardest job in the raid.
They have to not only keep the tanks up, but the raid, and themselves if the tank goes down. From an OT viewpoint, I can help myself with ER and because hebrlist, LB. But it sure is nice to see a bubble pop up around you when SW and LS are on cool down..
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November 12th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Woot! After a long wait, Vene finally do another Podcast! I’m so agreed with the tank-healer relationship and the social perspective of the game. Am currently been lvling a healer alt prior to this podcast just so I’ll learn the different side of the game. Imho, healers should get the respect they deserve. Most of the time, they sacrifice themselves for the raid to survive.
PS. Great podcast as always, Vene =D
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November 13th, 2009 at 3:38 am
thx Vene
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November 15th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Okay. Far too lazy to read all the posts.
Firstly. Yay for the Podcast! MORE MORE MORE!
Second. I’m glad that someone is talking about the other side of the fence and how it affects us. I became a big believer in learning the other sides of the triangle to improve how I tank, and how I interact. I’m currently working on a pally healer (mostly because people said they’re hard to play, I just like proving people wrong).
Anyways. Awesome podcast. Bring more on!!!
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November 16th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Long time lurker and tank. I’ve played both a healer and a tank and I seem to be in the minority here. I hear tanks saying that they don’t care about who dies? As raid lead and main tank, majority of the deaths I take as a personal failing for not either taunting, intervening properly or directing people properly. Obviously ADD McFailPants standing in fire is one thing, but I worry bout everyone surviving.
I’ve also developed strong relationships with all my heals. It’s a running joke that I’m a dead tank when farming because I don’t watch my health bar if the hits are below 10k
One of my heals has been keeping me vertical for a couple years and it’s nice when I think that he’s the best druid healer and that he thinks the same of my tanking. And I have the same rapport with my disc priest as well. Confidence without arrogance makes everyone play better.
Go out there and get to know your heals! Respect them and they’ll keep you vertical.
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November 28th, 2009 at 5:25 am
I was really happy to hear the last part about healers and you. Healing can be very stressful and, like tanking, give that rush. Being the paladin that I am, I’ve lived a little of both worlds. Letting someone die really gets to you sometimes, as does saving someone. Tanking for so long, then jumping into raids to heal, you really understand both sides of the field. I know personally I’ve let a dps die to save you! Or even die to get a heal off for you!
But honestly Vene, great podcast, and another great post. I love going over your past stuff, and keeping up with the new stuff.
Thanks!
P.S: Vene does have a strong point guys, respect your team. Without them you are nothing.
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January 25th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Hi Vene,
Thanks for this podcast. It’s been an totally rewarding experience changing how I interact with my healers and the rest of the raid in general after listening to this episode of your podcast.
We’ve applied this attitude to all the groups in a raid and where are teamwork was strong and effective before has improved to new levels of cooperation that are giving us a real edge on each encounter.
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