Bear tanking wise it seems rather dire (hur hur hur);
single target:
[ul]
[li]1. Keep up Demoralizing Roar.[/li][li]2. Keep Mangle on cooldown.[/li][li]3. Keep a stack of three Lacerates up.[/li][li]4. Keep Pulverize active.[/li][li]5. Keep Faerie Fire on cooldown.[/li][li]6. If you have plenty of rage, use Maul (and keep Infected Wounds in mind).[/li][li]7. If you have more rage still, keep Swipe on cooldown.[/li][li]8. If you have time to spare in that rotation, fill up the rest with Lacerate.[/li][/ul]
aoe:
[ul]
[li]1. Keep up Demoralizing Roar on all targets that can melee.[/li][li]2. Swipe every 6 seconds.[/li][li]3. Keep Mangle on cooldown on targets that you have low threat on.[/li][li]4. If you have plenty of rage, turn your auto swing into Maul.[/li][li]5. Keep several Lacerates up on the main target. If you expect that target to live long, it deserves a higher stack.[/li][li]6. Use Lacerate on as much targets as time allows. Just one apply is enough, for the threat and free Mangles.[/li][li]7. You might want to try and keep at least a partial Pulverize active, if everything is under control.[/li][/ul]
So yeah, no more swipe spam while the dps aoe them down.
ACChar
3222
Looks like the old bear tanking, pre-Swipe buff, back when we had to juggle lacerate stacks: it felt more honest than fooling around spamming the same skill :P
Is your tauren a female? They have long had trouble with the clipping height on that model, but never seem to fix the model itself. And it happens regularly enough you would think it would be the model they use to check openings. They couldn’t fit through the window in Molten Core and they couldn’t exit the fortress in Wintergrasp when WotLK started.
My Blacksmither is at 429. I take it I should wait until the easier to level recipies come up next week?
I have to say, I love the Blizzard store. I went to pre-order and pick up the digital versions of the other expansions since I will never open my collector’s editions. Incredible. Why can’t MS, et al copy that?
Ranulf
3227
Congrats on getting the tanking bug. If you really get into it, you’ll pick up all the ins and outs eventually, it just takes time and practice like all things. I started back in early BC while leveling up as a feral druid (sick of resto or boomkin leveling) and got hooked. I now have all 4 tank classes with ICC experience on each. Heal on 3 classes too. I spent first two years of the game (1.0) as a hunter then druid healing raids and priest healing pvp. I sort of walked into tanking Karazhan and leading it and got hooked. I still get tired after a raid but I think the most draining aspect for me has been raid healing and leading at the same time.
I’m not optimistic on Cata tanking at this point. Hopefully the game design is actually around the new threat mechanics cause playing LK instances based on aoe threat while having weak threat is annoying.
Killing the aoe threat/ease for tanks really won’t make people better players, just more frustrated. There was a reason MagistersTerrace while a fun instance if done right got annoying with having to moonfire/hurricane pull. The tank role design is better now for sure but LK tanking got easy because of instance/mob designs not spam aoe. I’m going to get real burned out on having to tank 5+ mob groups with crappy aoe threat abilities that dont give me time to build threat. We’ve gone from easy aoe threat with weak single target threat (when dps geared up after naxx) to easysauce single threat thanks to vengeance and horrid aoe threat. The only classes that can push threat are the burst ones in the first 30-60s of a boss fight.
Marcus
3229
What the fuck did I just watch.
She didn’t even say it right.
What’s wrong with her neck?
It’s not nice to make fun of handicapped people.
I can’t wait to make a Wor-gyn.
Oh man heroics running is so weird now.
I did 10 yesterday to hit exalted with the Goblins for the mount.
It’s so crazy with all those overgeared people especially when you were there when people tried those instances first way back.
I think our Azol’Nerub run took 5 min (they asked me to bug the spider as rogue). The king should have died underground as he submerged dotted up to his butt but it seems he doesn’t take damage during the burrowing.
The tank in ToC pulled all 3 groups before the 2nd boss (the priest, pally and monk groups) after having asked the healer if he thinks he can cope (which he did).
UP was also ravaged in minutes. Bosses can’t even finish their voice scripts. I was already back in Org when the killed king was still talking (was kind of spooky).
Gear progression in WoTLK is even higher than in BC where I ran heroics up until the end as well. You couldn’t bunch 2-3 groups there and aoe no matter what gear you brought.
Ah well I’m exalted now so only ToCs for me for badges (for some heirlooms on my worgen).
ACChar
3234
You nailed it. The only two LK original dungeons which still nod to the old design I can remeber of are Utgarde Keep and Old Kingdom (I’m going from memory). Everywhere else you had ranged mobs that couldn’t reposition themselves or that didn’t have aoe spells, no roaming patrols, therefore you could just swipe a group and park yourself onto the ranged one. Remember Shattered Halls as a protection Paladin?
When the last three dungeons came, most people were surprised to see massive aoe from mobs (Pit of Saron, warlocks before the cave) or ranged mobs that could kill you (Halls of Reflection), and smooth runs there needed some kind of crowd control. I hope they went towards this model, keeping some of our new aoe tools, rather than the old days of tab-sunder.
Yesterday I sapped a mob in Occulus before pulling and yelled “OMG crowd control!” + /danced with the mob.
Later the healer whispered me and asked how I did that… :p
Thinking strongly about getting back into this. With the reintroduction of things like crowd control, the game sounds like it’s gotten a bit more strategic in instances. If so, that’s a good thing because the “zerg” was something that drove me away from the game.
I wasn’t planning on rejoining, but I’m getting tempted with the info you enabling bastards are supplying.
How much has really changed? Are 25% of the quests different? 50%? Has most everything changed? Is it only certain zones, so are places like Darkshire the same? From the 1-60 game, what are you finding the major differences really are?
Athryn
3237
Some zones have changed totally, some very little other than having a better designed flow. The human and night elf starter areas are of the latter, most of the quests are the same. I know that Duskwood, Arathi, Winterspring and Silithus are not much changed.
Everything else is very different.
Winterspring has actually changed more than people give it credit for. Physically, the only difference is that the Cataclysm has apparently destroyed the demon gorge on the southern end of the zone.
The quests are almost all different, though, and there are a few new mobs. Irritatingly, they added no new flight points, but the zone’s small enough that it almost doesn’t matter.
So I finished the DK starting area last night. I went to Org and started doing some standard things, picked up fishing and cooking but I couldn’t get any primary professions training, all the trainers just had blank text windows when I clicked on them. Is there something else I have to do? Are profession trainers not working for some reason?
Athryn
3240
Aha! My bad. I skipped looking over it in my world tour of picking up flight points since they didn’t add any.
I’m really surprised they didn’t add any to Winterspring and Silithus, considering some zones have ones every 10 feet it seems like.
