I should be working (harder).

Just four words…

…Red Sword of Courage! Ka-ching! Dropped on only my second run through heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.

/gleeclap

Updates: As I mentioned in the comments, our other protection warrior Bigal picked it up the next day. Congrats! And then the next night I tanked heroic UP a third time and picked up another Red Sword of Courage. Now I can bring two swords with different enchants. Crazy.

Ph***ed-up Loot Phriday

Northrend helms with horns. The worst must be the mail helms like this one. WTF? And what is up with the reservoir tip on that thing? One look at one of those on your partner’s protection warrior would be enough to switch your hinges.

Couldn’t Heroic Strike look more, well, heroic?

Here is the generic description of Heroic Strike:

A strong attack that increases melee damage by X and causes a high amount of threat. (Ranks 10 and up cause Y additional damage against dazed targets.)

Essentially it allows you to buff your next auto-attack to cause more damage and more threat. Heroic strike is used by protection warriors to increase their threat. It’s sometimes called a “rage dump” because it costs rage but causes the next auto-attack to not generate any rage. Thus it is something that is used when there is a surplus of rage and another more efficient ability in terms of threat per rage is not available. Fury warriors also use Heroic Strike to enhance their auto-attacks when Bloodthirst and Whirlwind are on cooldown, ideally only if they will still have enough rage to use those abilities when they come off cooldown. Heroic Strike is rarely useful for Arms warriors because of the unpredictability of their rotation.

Heroic Strike was terribly confusing for me when I was a young warrior because it was hard to see it doing anything. It doesn’t make a sound, the animation of a Heroic Strike is subtle (at least for female Night Elves) and it isn’t an instant attack or a channeled ability like, for example, Execute or Slam, respectively. It simply buffs your next auto-attack which could happen anywhere between immediately after you queue it up to 3+ seconds later, depending on the speed of your weapon(s). Now nearly two years later and at 80 I have a good understanding and appreciation for Heroic Strike, especially when I tank, but I still wish there was more feedback from its use. Cleave, which is like Heroic Strike but hits two nearby enemies simultaneously, does have a clear and recognizable animation. I can see very clearly when I have cleaved and thus when I can decide if I want to queue up another. I wish that there was a more clear animation, maybe similar to but distinct from that of Cleave, so that I can see when a Heroic Strike has landed (also, it would just look cool…many of our attacks are too visually subtle as it is).

I tried programming my Scrolling Combat Text addon to say “Heroic Strike!” but it just isn’t the same. Maybe I need some sort of macro to at least show others that I’m doing something, well, heroic:

/say I’m trying harder Keredria!
/cast Heroic Strike

Major undocumented change for protection warriors in 3.0.8.

Vigilance now makes a sound and has an associated graphic for the target. Woot! (Actually, it did bother me before that nobody could see I cared enough about someone to put it on them.)

An alt poll.

Before WotLK I spent quite a bit of time on some alts. I wasn’t interested in going DPS with Jess and our progression was a bit slow so I had lots of time to play them. But now my time and patience for leveling an alt is a bit limited. One reason is that I’ve been trying arms and fury specs with Jess for fun so in a way while Jess the protection warrior is my main, Jess the DPS warrior is my alt. Another reason is that the grind from 70 to 80 was just too recent and so I’m not very excited about doing many of these quests again. Also we are progressing through the content much faster so I have less time to play an alt and by the time I do level her up to 80 she’ll be farther behind. However I am still interested in having at least one 80 alt. Which should I choose and why?

I didn’t blink my eyes for six minutes.

That was the comment of our combat rogue Atania after we finally managed to down Heigan the Unclean for the first time.

Friday and Saturday were The Left Claw’s first venture into into Naxxramas. Friday night we started on the Arachnid Quarter. We managed to get Anub’Rekhan and Grand Widow Faerlina down with only a couple attempts each. Maexxna proved to be a bit more difficult. Once we got our positioning down so that healers and ranged were in range of the boss, tank, and cocooned victims, we were losing tanks to the frenzy phase. It was a bit more than just two healers could handle, even with our shadowpriest doing backup healing at that point.

Saturday night we returned with a third healer and downed Maexxna with one attempt and then we began working on the Plague Quarter. We were very amused with ourselves that we could not down the Stoneskin Gargoyles until we were finally able to time burst damage when they approached 30% health. Our first attempt on Noth the Plaguebringer took 16 minutes. We downed him on the second attempt in a little less time. Finally we came to Heigan the Unclean. I’d been looking forward to this fight. It’s more fun to explain than Shade of Aran. It took maybe five attempts before everyone learned to dance well enough. If I may brag a little, I had the dance down quite well, but then I had watched a few videos of the encounter beforehand so I had maybe a better idea of what to do. I adore this fight.  We didn’t have time for Loatheb but I am confident we’ll see him (her? how can you tell?) soon.

The drops were mostly caster stuff. I did pick up the Wraith Spear off Maexxna which should work reasonably well when I spec arms. I realize it’s itemized optimally for a hunter, but we didn’t have any hunters with us.

I forgot to take screenshots. I’m sure Keredria will have some up soon.

Back to raiding.

Truth is, I thought it mattered. I thought that raiding mattered. But does it? Bollocks! Not compared to how raiders matter.

Last night was The Left Claw’s first Wrath of the Lich King raid. We attempted Obsidian Sanctum. We were not able to defeat Sartharion but we got very very close. I think it went well despite the fact that we were not familiar with the encounter and had only two healers. It was interesting to return to raiding. There were some of the familiar elements of raiding: the excitement, the tension, the strategy discussions, the whispered criticism suggestions, but it was also noticably more casual than our first forays into Karazhan.

Soon we’ll be making our first venture into Naxxramas. I suspect that will go well. I’ll try to report on that raid and remember to take a few pics.

On a successful tank-healer relationship.

Since it went public, many folks have asked me about the secrets of a successful tank-healer relationship. Well, ok, nobody asked but I know you want to know. A healthy tank-healer relationship is not unlike a healthy marriage. The foundation of your relationship is chemistry and history, but there are other important elements. For one it is useful if you know each other well in real life so that there is a distinction not only between your game identity and your real life identity, but also in the relationships between those identities and those of your partner. Even if you’ve never met in real life, at least there is some connection outside the game. Little things like remembering and honoring birthdays and anniversaries go a long way. And if you are able you might even write a little poem or song for each other. It also helps to not always be serious — joke around and be playful. The tank-healer relationship defines who you are as a tank or a healer, and you support one another because of your complementary roles, but just as importantly that support is unconditional:

[W:To] [Keredria]: i sent you a bunch more spice. you don’t need to cook it all up for me. it’s just there for you to use as you want
[W:From] [Keredria]: kk i will parcel it out to you on my discretion…
[W:To] [Keredria]: lol
[W:From] [Keredria]: based on performance

Sleepy Jess.

Why is Jess sleepy? Well that big heavy Wyrmclaw Battleaxe might have something to do with it. The Left Claw is a small guild with three tanks, so we take turns tanking and DPS. It’s been an interesting challenge for me to improve my gear and performance to become, at best, adequate. And I get some encouragement like “well, you’re almost doing as much DPS as the tank” and “maybe you should try harder.” Of course a certain resto druid is fortunate I didn’t take screenshots of recount summaries when she specced boomkin for a recent heroic Utgarde Keep run. I think she was too busy dancing. Boomkin got back.

My preference lately has been for arms. I like the randomness of it. It does take a bit of practice to do good DPS with arms because of the intricate timings and rage management. (If you are interested in PvE arms in WotLK I highly recommend you read this.) Fury is just terribly boring for me, and I get frustrated listening to all the misses from the autoattacks. But I plan to give fury another try once they make the change to Bloodsurge, and maybe pick up a pair of new swords for it. I want to enjoy fury, but I’m just not there yet.

The other reason why Jess is tired is that she’s been spending quite a bit of time trying to organize her bank. Because of the different hit caps for arms and fury, and because I’m still not sure about the best combination of hit, crit, attack power, and armor penetration, I’ve been keeping quite a collection of gear in the bank.