A tank’s alts.

 

Aksana (Draenai Fire Mage). Aksana was my first alt and is currently level 40 (yay no more walking!). I have to admit that I find the mage a bit tiring to solo (although no more so than a warrior), but I do so enjoy playing her in a 5-man (lately I’ve been doing some runs through Scarlett Monastery with some other alts). Playing a mage is an interesting contrast to a tank. For a tank the primary objective is to hold aggro. DPS is quite secondary. But for a mage the primary objective is DPS (and some occasional CC and dispelling) while avoiding aggro. I enjoy trying to choose and time my spells to maximize damage while just barely avoiding getting aggro off the tank or melee members of my party. Also it’s fun seeing the fight from “behind the front lines” for a change.

Compared to Jessika, Aksana is quite extroverted, charming, and a bit of a flirt. You don’t have to be shy when you have that much firepower. She’s got some great lines. “Look at my hoof! Does this crack look infected to you?” Yeah, it isn’t her hooves you are looking at eh?

Muriel (Human Shadow Priest). I started a priest with the intention of trying my hand at a healer. Also I was interested in what looked to me like a challenging class. Priests are a bit tough going until you get to about 20, but after that they grind like a dream if you spec shadow (no sitting on my butt charging mana with spirit tap). Muriel is level 31 now (I just had to get Mind Control). I’ve tried my hand at healing in groups a few times. As a tank I have a great appreciation for the role of a healer, so it is interesting to actually try it for a change. I must admit though that I find it hard to resist handing-out some Shadow Word:Pain, a Mind Flay on a runner, or a Mind Blast for a killing shot (I want my spirit tap dammit!).

Muriel hasn’t developed much of a personality yet. I’ve tried to give her a bit of a dark side by outfitting her in black, but the goodly priest side keeps coming out. She does have a little bit of a gypsy thing going though.

Sula (Blood Elf Affliction Warlock). Unfortunately Sula has been neglected lately. I got her to level 30 but she’s been there for some time now. My friends and I have Alliance mains so we are often there instead of Horde-side. I think the warlock is my favorite caster class. I love the versatility of their spells and the dynamics of the energy exchange of a warlock. A warlock can sacrifice her own health for more mana, drain the health or mana of a mob, sacrifice her own health to heal a pet, drain mana from a pet, and even do an AOE at the risk of killing herself. I love having my own personal tank (i.e. Voidwalker)! A warlock is a small party wrapped-up in one toon (tank, healer, DPS, and some utility) and fun to solo, but I’m interested in someday trying her out in a 5-man.

Sula has some serious attitude — she’s got this snobbish sorority girl thing going. She’s everything Jessika is not. She’s way too pretty and cool to be bothered getting her hands dirty/bloody. She’d rather send in the pet, cast a few DOTs, and then do her nails while waiting for the fight to be over. She’s so belfy!

It is interesting perhaps that a tank’s alts are all clothy casters. I’ve thought seriously about a balance druid, but at this point I don’t know if I have the time or energy to level another toon to their 20’s. Also I am having a hard time designing a Night Elf that doesn’t look like one of my friends since most of them have nelf mains.

 

Intervene.

I had been having trouble using intervene effectively. For those who don’t know intervene is the ability to “run at high speed towards a party member, intercepting the next melee or ranged attack made against them.” Warriors pick this up at 70 and it only works in Defensive Stance. There are two difficulties with using it. It only works when the range to your friendly target is between 8 and 25 yards, which is a fairly narrow window, and you need to target the friendly target (or your target’s target with the help of a standard macro) to use it. The range restriction we tanks will just need to live with, but for targeting I wrote a my own macro which works great:

/cast [target=Keredria] Intervene;

Keredria of course is our resto druid and the one that is most likely to need an intervene (I associated the macro with the Tree of Life icon — I call it my “save K’s butt macro”). I might add that I find intervene useful not just for intervening attacks, but also as an easy way to find and get close to somebody quickly. It works even when the friendly target is not under attack or while not in combat.

Weekend update with Jessika.

As usual Keredria beat me to it, but here’s an update from the tank’s perspective.

• We did Shadow Labyrinth for the first time, but we had Adamas along with us to show us the ropes. Adamas is a good friend from way back (first on my friends list) and a hell of a feral druid. He helped us with setting up pulls and strategy for the bosses. It was very useful to have an off-tank and backup-healer. It was great when he did a battle rez for Keredria during our fight with the second boss. We had very little difficulty with the first two bosses, but we couldn’t seem to dish out enough dps with the third boss (we’ll be back Grandmaster Vorpil). But despite that I am feeling better about my skills.
• We finally got around to trying the Headless Horseman. I was there for only a couple of fights while the others farmed him until nobody was left to summon. I didn’t miss much more than some fun since he doesn’t drop anything of much value for tanks. Keredria upgraded both of her rings. Because of that I will forgive her (this time) for healing another tank.
• Our rogues are fine-tuning their gear and specs. Atania reached 70 recently and Daihiro is getting close. Watching these two in action is awesome. I love the “snick-snick” sound of dual-dagger-wielding, and a good stun-lock is just amazing. Unfortunately for those of us that are specced and geared specifically for instances the rogues have acquired a taste for PvP. Hopefully they won’t get too hardcore.
• Sometime back with Keredria’s help I worked through most of a couple of quest chains in Shadowmoon Valley for some gear upgrades: Grom’tor’s Charge and the Netherwing Protector’s Shield. I was finally able to get Grom’tor’s Charge and am very happy with it. Once I get the shield I’ll move around a few gems and get myself un-critable. Special thanks to Brigin for bringing these excellent pre-Karazhan tanking items to my attention.

The (dys)function of a guild.

Recently I came across episodes of The Guild. I find these quite amusing. Fortunately the members of The Left Claw, albeit peculiar in their own ways, don’t resemble any of these characters.

The actress that plays Codex looked strangely familiar to me when I first saw the videos. Then looking at her bio I learned that she played a “slayer in training” on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. I am a HUGE Buffy fan. Jessika was inspired by Buffy — the destined but reluctant girl warrior.

In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.

I’ve aggroed myself.

I have not been very pleased with my tanking lately. As I mentioned in a previous post we got seriously spanked in Sethekk Halls, and then the other evening I got spanked several times by Mogor while helping out in The Ring of Blood in Nagrand. These don’t seem to me like mobs that should be as difficult for me as they have been. I’m guessing the issue might be one of timing my shield blocks and, when appropriate, spell reflects, but I need to study my combat log more closely in the future to be sure.

So I have managed to aggro myself. My rage bar fills up, I sunder myself to dump the rage and then just end up securing aggro and building-up rage again. I guess that is what they call “beating yourself up.” Sometimes when I have a bit more rage then I know what to do with I spam noisy flashy Thunder Claps. Today while driving in to work I played The Cure as loud as I could stand.

Tanking lessons learned (but trying to remember).

In the spirit of Keredria’s post on healing lessons, I thought I would list here some lessons I learned about tanking (as a protection warrior). The lessons have been easily learned but not always remembered.

• Love thyself. It is easy for me to get caught-up with getting and maintaining aggro on mobs or a boss (I am an aggro whore), but I can’t tank as a wisp. I need to keep reminding myself to hit my shield block when it becomes available, keep commanding shout up, and use my pots, trinkets, and last stand.
• Love thy healer. It goes without saying that a tank needs and protects their healer. But that is not enough. It is critical for me to know where my healer is at all times and be ready to come to her aid — particularly when there is the possibility of an aggro reset. Furthermore when it comes to protecting my healer everyone else is disposable. If a rogue or caster gets aggro, they are on their own if the healer is threatened. And unless somebody does something very stupid, if my healer dies it is my fault. Period.
• Know thy enemy. Because the tank is responsible for pulling and managing aggro, the responsibility of making tactical decisions often falls on me. Thus it is important for me to know what mobs/bosses can and will do, and what can and can’t be done to mobs/bosses. Research pays-off.
• Know thy friends. I need to have a good understanding of the abilities and limitations of the other members of my party. Again, research pays-off.
• Know and use thy environment. One of the great benefits of having aggro is that I can often control where a mob/boss will be. In some cases — particularly with bosses — I can move the fight to a location that will be to our advantage. I am a tank, not a turret. I need to get it in my head that I have treads.

Dead Keredia.

In a failed attempt to take down Dimensius the All-Devouring in Netherstorm we wiped and Keredria was killed while attempting to shift to flight form outside Manaforge Ultris. Her body was left floating in the air out of reach for her to rez. Here’s a screenshot (click on the thumbnail). Poor Keredria. It was a hard weekend for her.

Update: Well we did manage to take down Dimensius after calling in a hunter. This is a tough fight if you don’t have some really good dps to take down Dimensius’ health before the NPC tank goes down. That’s the other thing — I didn’t get to tank until the end when the NPC died so I felt a bit useless. I was able to spell reflect a few shadowbolts but I missed the timing on one and it was enough to kill me (Keredria had already run out of mana healing the NPC so my health was down anyway).

Sethekk sukketh.

We had two runs through normal Sethekk Halls this weekend. The first night with Keredria (resto druid), Daihiro (combat rogue), and two outsiders: a mage and a rogue. The second night we had Atania (combat rogue) and a hunter with us. This instance was somewhat difficult for us. Two things were giving us trouble: the Sethekk Prophets and the second boss Talon King Ikiss. The Prophets seemed unusually difficult to sap, and their fear caused problems if I lost aggro on mobs that would go for Keredria. Sometimes I was able to shield bash or bring up spell reflection in time, but the cast time for their fear spell is very short so the timing was difficult. Talon King Ikiss was particularly frustrating. We knew how to detect and avoid his arcane blast, but I had difficulty getting aggro afterwards before he’d take down Keredria, and Keredria was having trouble clearing the blast because she’s slower in tree form. We are going to have to work a bit on our strategy. Also if and when we go in again we may try using the doorway instead of the columns to avoid the arcane blast. But it may be some time before we step into Sethekk Halls again as Keredria made it quite clear she’s not going to go back without a very good reason. It was not a healer-friendly instance. She often died before me which is not how it should be in my opinion. From the perspective of tank and healer this was a wake-up call: our gear is improving but we need to work more on our game.

However there were some gains despite our repair bills and depleted stock of pots and scrolls. We got some rep with lower city and xp for Atania and Daihiro. I picked up Terokk’s Quill as a quest reward. I haven’t done two-handers much but I’ll play with this for a bit while running solo. I like the fact that it matches my red and black solo gear! Keredria selected The Saga of Terokk which is a nice off-hand for her to use until we find her something better. But best of all the Shoulderpads of Assassination dropped (Atania won the roll). It is a relatively rare drop from Talon King Ikiss and a sweet blue for a rogue.

There were a couple of funny moments in Sethekk Halls. The first night we got into a fight where all but two mobs died (a Prophet and I think a shaman) and everyone in the party except Keredria and me. We got locked into a non-ending cycle of aggro, fear, and heal. I couldn’t dish out quite enough dps to take down the mobs due to their fears and healing (although in retrospect I might have switched to dps gear), but they couldn’t take us down either. This went on for some time until our rogue came back to help me take down the mobs. The second night we had a rather amusing wipe due to the fact that Atania approached four mobs in an attempt to sap one but neglected to activate her stealth! LOL! I’m not sure who was more surprised, her or the mobs.

Grinding.

Last night Keredria and I were grinding for Arakkoa feathers in Terokkar Forest to get our reputation with the Lower City faction up to honored. Of course these are dropped, somewhat reluctantly, by various Arakkoa mobs.

 

 

These guys remind me of the Skeksis from the “muppet” movie The Dark Crystal. It may only be our imagination but it seems like they drop a lot of greens. By the end of the evening we both had bags full of greens to sell or have disenchanted by Daihiro’s overworked enchanter alt.

Starman mentioned on an episode of the World of Warcast podcast that if you do have to do some heaving grinding it is good to get a “grinding buddy.” This is very true. Grinding was much less monotonous and seemed to go by faster after Keredria and I joined up. Once again, Tank-Healer team FTW!

 

Early endgame.

So The Left Claw is moving from the “Breakfast Club” misc-bunch-of-people-bond-together stage to the “St. Elmo’s Fire” what-the-hell-do-I-do-with-myself-now stage (but with very little drama and no sex, although I think Sebastian tried to pinch my butt). I think Jess is Ally Sheedy / Allison Reynolds / Leslie Hunter, but perhaps somebody should slap me before I slip in another Brat Pack reference.

There have already been discussions of getting keyed for Karazhan, reputation grinds, and the crafting of epics. However we are still questing a few blues from Outland and getting our pre-70s leveled-up. Hey hey hey hey! Don’t you forget about me!

A protection warrior does PvP.

Last night we (Atania, Daihiro, Keredria, and myself) did the The Ring of Blood quest line in Nagrand (new daggers for the rogues, a bat-staff for Keredria, and a nice chunk of change). Afterwards on the way to Telaar the others got mixed up in some PvP between Halaa and Garadar. An Undead warlock and a Tauren shaman were giving my guildies some grief so I switched to solo gear and went to see if I could help out.

I have done very little PvP. It is hard for me to get out of the tanking mindset (I think I actually tried to taunt), and I am not used to using warrior abilities for PvP (e.g., it didn’t occur to me to use charge or intercept, but I did remember to use hamstring). I am not sure how effective a protection warrior can be at PvP. The rogues were doing great of course, and although Keredria was in her healing gear she was able spam nukes because of her deep mana pool in addition to healing. I suppose at the very least I can be a diversion, and with my high health and damage mitigation I can survive a bit longer.

Being versus playing Jess.

Not much has been happening lately. The rogues haven’t been on much, and Keredria and Sebastian have been out of town, so no instance runs or questing since I loathe PUGs and find solo questing at 70 a bit dull. That leaves rep grinding (sucks) and fishing (enjoyable and therapeutic, but you can only fish so much).

From this I came to realize how my attitude toward the game and Jess changes when my WoW friends are on- or off-line. When they are on I am Jess, whereas when they are off I am just playing her. I’m don’t know how to better explain it, but I do know that I’d rather be Jess.

Why I love rogues.

I love rogues. Well, specifically Left Claw rogues. As a tank I find working with rogues a delight. Why?

• Rogues generate less threat, so I have less trouble keeping aggro.
• When a rogue does get aggro, they are usually close by so I don’t have to go very far to reestablish aggro.
• Provided they don’t have aggro, rogues attack from behind which gives me better visibility.
• Rogues have long-term crowd control (sap), short-term crowd control (cheap shot), and the ability to interrupt casters (kick) — all of which help me manage aggro with trash mobs.

Our current 5-man group consists of a protection warrior (me), a restoration druid (Keredria) and three combat rogues (Atania, Daihiro, and Molkster). In action it’s a beautiful thing: me building threat and maintaining aggro on the mobs/boss, the rogues attacking from the flanks and behind, and Keredria healing. They are like a pack of hungry cubs with their mother lion. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to keep them all in line (in our last instance run Keredria referred to me as the “mom”), but it’s fun.

Of course I realize there are limitations to a rogue-only DPS component in a 5-man. No off-tank, no ranged dps, no backup healer, and limited crowd control for non-humanoids, but we get by for now.

This drop rate sucks!

Well I promised myself that I wouldn’t dwell on technical stuff, but here’s something I’ve been wondering about. We are all familiar with annoyingly low drop rates. You are out killing mobs to get r of something, but not every mob drops it. I wonder how Blizzard has programmed the randomness of the drops. If we assume that each mob drops the item with probability p, and that the probability of a drop on for mob t does not depend on whether the previous t-1 mobs dropped, the probability that you will need to kill k mobs to get r items might be determined by a negative binomial distribution so that the probability is

where Γ represents the gamma function which simplifies to a factorial since r and k are integers. If this is true then on average it will take r(1-p)/p mobs to get your r drops, but of course the actual number of mobs required can vary significantly from person to person. But I wonder if this is true. Is the drop probability constant from mob to mob (assuming all mobs are of the same type of course)? And does the probability of a given mob dropping depend on how many items have dropped already? The latter might be possible if Blizzard wanted to keep people from getting too frustrated (given the number of players, some would have to endure a VERY long grinding session just by chance). It is possible to test this empirically, but I have better things to do.

/sigh

I’m not sure why I am doing this. Perhaps it is to amuse my guildies. Perhaps it is to amuse myself. Perhaps because Keredria makes it look like fun. Perhaps because when I look at /played I realize that the WoW-verse has become a significant part of my life, both temporally and socially, and thus in need of some self-reflection and analysis, which against better judgment will be made public here (for my and my guildies’ amusement).

Jessika is a Night Elf protection warrior — primary (only?) tank of a tiny guild (un)known as The Left Claw on Drenden. And I, the anonymous narrator, am Jessika — usually just “Jess” to my WoW friends (no it is not my real name). This blog is about us, our WoW friends, and the WoW-verse.

So what do I do now? /help