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!

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!

Tanking the Elemental Bosses

Funny how I often only recognize a need for tank education while playing my healer. After many painful Gahz’rilla runs, it has become apparent to me that there is significant room for education here.

The Elemental Bosses are four holiday bosses associated with the pre-Cataclysm event. They’re mostly updates of vanilla bosses, with one completely new boss who appears to be a knockoff of Thunderaan. They drop item level 251 gear, i.e. gear of equivalent quality to that which drops in ICC10 normal.

All four of the elemental bosses are unlocked by the defeat of the invasions of Orgrimmar/Ironforge and Thunder Bluff/Stormwind. These happen roughly every 3 hours, and the cities of either faction will always be attacked simultaneously. If the invasion of Org/Ironforge is defeated, Flamelash and Theradras become available; if the invasion of TB/SW is defeated, Gahz’rilla and Sarsarun become available. They’re only available for about half an hour after the defeat of the invasion, but you don’t have to participate in the fight to queue for them. You can only queue for one elemental boss at once.

Plate tanking gear drops from Flamelash (Salamander Skin), Theradras (Barrier of the Earth Princess), and Gahz’rilla (Twilight Offering Bands). Melee leather, for our druid friends, drops from Sarsarun (Pulmonary Casing).

Screenshots are up!

A Quick and Dirty Guide to Five-Man Tanking, for New Tanks

The goal of this entry is to give you everything you need to know for base tanking competence and confidence on your first foray into a five-man dungeon, in an easily digestible format that preferably takes less than ten minutes to read. This may be too ambitious a goal. If you found parts of this guide unnecessary, or if you have trouble with something you think the guide should address, please drop me a comment so I can improve it.

The Basic Idea

As a tank, your two duties are to stay alive, and to keep enemies attacking you instead of your party. Staying alive is done mostly by your gear and your healer, but you can help out by only pulling a few enemies at a time. Keeping enemies attacking you is achieved mostly by doing damage to them.