Rule of Thumb Guide to Garrison Building Priorities

This was going to be a big fuck-off guide to which Garrison buildings and followers to go after, complete with introductions to a ton of concepts. But Warlords comes out in half an hour, and my friends are waiting for my recommendations, so instead here is the ultra-condensed version, which I may or may not expand upon sometime next week. (Work is slightly crazy for me right now.)

Priority Ranking for Small (Profession) Buildings

You get a total of 3 small buildings.

1. If you don’t have any friends whose enchanting workshop you can bum off of, build the enchanting workshop. (If you’re the guild’s enchanter, take one for the team! CoughBlanketcough.)
2. If you have alchemy and a source of herbs (or are level 96+), build the alchemy workshop.
3. If you have jewelcrafting, build the jewelcrafting workshop.
4. If you are are a tailor or a blacksmith, build that workshop.
5. If you have both leatherworking and a source of skins, build the tannery.
6. If you’re gearing this toon for raiding, build the salvage yard. (Available at lvl 96). You get your second plot around level 91, and don’t get your third plot until level 100, so if you reach this point in the list for your first or second workshop, just leave your second plot open.
7. If you’re an engineer, build the engineering shop.
8. If you have inscription and a source of herbs (or are level 96+), build the inscription workshop.
9. If you wear cloth or plate, build that workshop.
10. If you wear leather or mail and have a source of skins, build the tannery.
11. If you’re a hunter, build the engineering shop.
12. If you regularly use staves and have a source of herbs (or are level 96+), build the inscription shop.
13. Build the enchanting workshop.

Incidentally, that “bumming off of” for the enchanting workshop? That’s the enchanter’s cauldron. It lets you disenchant gear even if you’re not an enchanter, which means save your BoP gear for disenchanting. Yes, guests to your garrison can use it, I tested it in beta.

Reaver DoTs and Weapon Damage

Long time no talk! How many years, how many winters!

I’ve been enjoying myself leveling my Riftstalker, slowly, through Storm Legion content. I have a job now, with a ridiculous commute, so I don’t get a whole lot of time per day. I’ve spent some time on Riftstalker theorycraft, but here’s the problem: it’s all really obvious.

See, Rift has this mechanic called Gifts, which are stat bonuses that you get per point you invest in a talent tree (“soul”). If you invest in a DPS soul you get bonus damage, if you invest in a healing soul you get bonus healing, if you invest in a tank soul you get bonus damage reduction/health, and so on.

One of the unintended consequences of this system is that creating talent builds for non-warrior tanks – the cleric Justicar and, yes, the rogue Riftstalker – is really boring. Because of the passive survivability you receive from investing in each class’s one tanking soul, even the most useless talent in that soul is better than your alternatives in other souls, simply due to the passive survivability it gains from the Gift. That leaves only 15 talent points to play with between two subsouls. In the case of the Riftstalker, Gifts even predetermine one of your two subsouls, the Bard; and the last subsoul is in contention only because of a major survivability cooldown belonging to the only DPS soul in the running, the Bladedancer. And it’s still a toss-up, because its rival, the Tactician, has more reliable damage reduction paired with a Gifted increase in self-healing!

tl;dr: Riftstalker talent trees are boring. The playstyle is engaging, with a 1 second GCD and a good half dozen short-duration (30 s or less) survivability buffs/debuffs to keep track of; but aside from “Remember, you don’t need a full set of combo points to use a survival finisher!”, there’s not much to say about them.

Remember, Riftstalkers, you don’t need a full set of combo points to use a survival finisher!

OK, let’s talk about warriors.

Looking For Direction

I know I have a couple regular readers, so I thought I’d ask your opinion on this:

What should I do with my blog, since I’m not upgrading to Mists?

I’m currently leveling, very slowly, in Rift – would you like to hear about my Riftstalker adventures, and for this to eventually become a Riftstalker blog?

Would you prefer I use this blog to write my personal thoughts and ramblings, including but not limited to thoughts on politics, bad jokes, and whining?

Should I make this blog largely private, and use it to communicate about Project Mosasaur and/or the Adventure App?

Or should I stop posting to the blog, and leave it as a resource for those of you still playing on private servers set at earlier levels? (Yeah, I see you in my search statistics “protection warrior 3.3.5a talents” and “tanking addons for 2.4.3”).

Drop me a comment if you have an opinion.

Bizarre Stat Priorities in 5.0.4

There are just under 3 weeks left until Mists of Pandaria, and thus, just under 3 weeks during which your Humble Narrator must still concern herself with proper tanking form. I can’t work up the give-a-damn to completely rework my spreadsheet for less than a month of play – especially since most of the theorycrafting resources I rely upon, most notably Elitist Jerks’ rating conversions, have not updated their level 85 stat values, focusing instead on the upcoming level 90 formulae. I don’t begrudge them their focus on MoP – if I were upgrading, I’d focus on it too.

I’ll probably get the expansion eventually, once the sting of rage’s death has died down a little. Despite its increased power – I’m not so divorced from reality as to claim that the warrior changes weren’t a significant buff! – all I can see when I watch my rage bar stand, unmoved, in the face of a boss hit, is a mockery of the class I once loved.

To the point, and more importantly, on from the melodrama! Combat statistics received some major overhauls this patch, most notably with the introduction of the two-roll system for block; and of course, our own stat priorities widened to include hit and expertise.

Stances, Rage, and Uncrittable in Mists of Pandaria

Here’s the deal with my long lack of posts in this space: in addition to my own innate laziness and the real-life challenges of the past few months (overcoming my depression-induced conditioning enough to actually look for a job, running around the country for interviews, spending the majority of the rest of my time curled up in bed clutching a dolphin and freaking out), I’ve also had some major apprehensions about the changes Blizz has been making to warriors, especially protection warriors, in the name of active mitigation. I didn’t want to jump the gun by stereotypically claiming that what was going on in beta was ruining the class, especially since until a week ago I had barely played on beta due to my internet situation.

I’ve played on beta now, and found that my suspicions were, for the most part, correct.

I’d like to clarify before I get into the meat of my whining that my problems with the 5.X warrior model are a matter of personal preference and class identity. As far as I know (though I haven’t been keeping up with the theorycraft as much as I should have, see above) there’s nothing about the new warrior model that makes them unplayable; they seem to be where they’ve always been, the dependable baseline of tank acceptability. Sure, DKs will still be the kings of magical damage, and the new bear mastery is WTFoverpowered, but my objections to the new direction of the warrior class are about enjoyment, not numbers. Whether this makes them more or less relevant is your call. 

Shield Tank Spreadsheet v. 4.3.0.1 on Google Docs

Hello my lovelies,

After nearly a month without a computer I’m back in business, with a shiny ‘new’ desktop. Raiding is now prettier, but significantly less comfortable.

At the request of some guildies who don’t have Excel, I have uploaded the DR spreadsheet to Google Docs, and done the necessary adjustments to make it functional and user-friendly in that environment. None of the math has changed since I uploaded the Excel version of 4.3.0.1, so you should use whichever format you prefer.

Any future updates to the spreadsheet will be done in parallel on Google Docs and the Excel version.

Shield Tank Spreadsheet v. 4.3.0.1

If you’re reading this in the future, this spreadsheet may be broken or out of date. Please see the Spreadsheets category for the most recent version.

Well I have some egg on my face.

I was messing around with full shield block uptime on Ultraxion and caught a basic probability error in my Hold the Line calculation. An egregious error which brings shame upon family. (My parents met in a graduate-level math course, to give you an idea of the magnitude of this shame).

I have corrected the error, and you can find the updated spreadsheet here: damagereduction_4.3.0.1 .

Thankfully, while the fact of the error was monstrous, the amount of error it introduced into the spreadsheet’s “recommendations” was very small. Warriors talented into Hold the Line may see a slight difference in their optimum dodge:parry ratio for overall damage reduction, but paladins, warriors without Hold the Line, and warriors gearing for CTC instead of damage reduction shouldn’t be affected by the change.

Thank you for your patience, and I’d just like to reiterate how very contrite I feel for having published this error.

Shield Tank Spreadsheet v. 4.3.0.0

If you’re reading this in the future, this spreadsheet may be broken or out of date. Please see the Spreadsheets category for the most recent version.

Here’s the most recent spreadsheet: damagereduction_4.3.0.

Changes from version 4.2.2.0:

• Raised the cap on Shield Block and Holy Shield uptime to 100%, to allow modeling of the Ultraxion encounter
• Changed CTC calculation to include Shield Block if its uptime is at 100%
• Fixed a few formulas broken by the above changes.

I was also unable to replicate on my home computer a bug in the last version’s Yes/No dropdowns. Hopefully this means it resolved itself. If you experience this bug in the new version (you’ll know it when you see it) please drop me a line, either in the comments below or at uncrittable AT gmail DOT com.

Patch 4.3 Valor Point Picks (For Warriors)

Veneretio used to post his emblem-purchased gear picks every major content patch, before his untimely retirement. I of course am no Veneretio, but since I have to construct my pick order myself now, I submit them for popular consumption.

1. Forgesmelter Waistplate – Belt – 1650 VP
2. Signet of the Resolute – Ring – 1250 VP
3. Guardspike Choker – Neck – 1250 VP
4. Indefatigable Greatcloak – Cloak – 1250 VP
5. Bladeshatter Treads – Boots – 1650 VP (These are BoE – use an alt to buy them ASAP if you have one.)
6. Ring of Torn Flesh – Ring – 1250 VP
7. Chestplate of the Unshakable Titan – 2200 VP

• Fire of the Deep

Note that only numbers 1-4 are best in slot pre-hardmode; whether or not you want to buy 5-7 will depend on if better has dropped for you already.

A Visual Guide to Tanking Alysrazor 10N

Yes, yes, I know, it’s nearly time for tier 13 and I’m posting a guide for a tier 12 normal mode fight. It’s just that my raid recently picked up a talented tank with no previous Firelands experience, and tank positioning on Alysrazor is hard to explain with words alone. Also we’re sticking to Firelands until our spriest gets his staff, so it should be relevant for… two more weeks?

Because boss guides are everywhere and because I am lazy, I’m not going to explain the whooole Alysrazor fight. Consider this guide more of a tank-oriented supplemental.

I hope you find it useful!