Signet of the Elder Council, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Agi

Sorry bears, I’m leaving you out today, because I know you already adore agility.

This is the Signet of the Elder Council.

It is the second best tanking ring available pre-raid for warriors and death knights of the mastery-stacking variety, after the Elementium Moebius band – and only because the Moebius band has a gem slot.

It is the best tanking ring available pre-raid for paladins.

And it’s an agility piece.

A Gearing Flowchart

As promised, here is my 4.0.3/4.0.6 Tank Gearing Flowchart!

Green = Start
White = Me
Red = Me, making a recommendation
Grey = You

Death Knight-specific information is from Pwnwear; Druid-specific information is from the official tanking forums and The Inconspicuous Bear; Paladin-specific information is from Maintankadin; and Warrior-specific information is from my own flowchart.

For the sake of the flow, I did oversimplify my warrior recommendation. If you have over 1000 mastery, warriors should slightly prefer parry over dodge, but the specific ratio of parry:dodge varies with mastery and honestly I should just give you my spreadsheet, shouldn’t I.

Maybe after the weekend’s Rift beta.

Also, click on the flowchart to see it full size. Please. It’s not my intention to destroy your eyes.

To Rift!

P.S. I’m trying out the Riftstalker, the rogue tanking soul. Should be interesting. I may report back on what I find!

The Importance of an Audience

I Realize What My True Calling in Life Is around once a month.

My most recent Realization Of My True Calling in Life has been that I really enjoy teaching people mathy-analytic stuff. This particular Realization etc. is a common one for me, as I did some TAing in college, but I never made the connection between it and this blog until today.

You may recall, if you’re one of my guildies or if you’ve gone back and read the archives (I wouldn’t recommend it), that I started writing this blog during Wrath’s end-of-expansion lull, when everyone was rolling and leveling alts. This gave me lots of baby guildie tanks to educate, and I ended up answering the same questions enough times that I just wrote them up and posted them here. But then Cata came, and with it, a return to leveling and gearing mains.