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 Guide to Reaching the CTC Cap as a Warrior

What is CTC?

CTC stands for Combat Table Coverage. Every time an enemy swings at you, the Combat Table is what decides whether you dodge, parry, block, etc. “Coverage” is what percent of the time the swing is not an unmitigated hit: so, your combined chance to block, dodge, parry, or be missed.

Full CTC happens when your chance to take an unblocked hit is 0%. This is called the CTC cap or block cap. It is sometimes also called being unhittable or being uncrushable.

When do I have full CTC/What is the CTC cap?

When your combined Miss+Dodge+Parry+Block = 102.4%.

Why 102.4% and not 100%?

102.4% is what it takes to be unhittable versus a raid boss. Against a level 85, it would be 100%.

Every level of difference between you and the thing that’s hitting you subtracts 0.2% from your Miss, Dodge, Parry, and Block. Raid bosses are considered by the game to be 3 levels higher than you, so your Miss, Dodge, Parry and Block are a combined 2.4% lower than their default displayed values. So we need a displayed CTC of 102.4% (against a level 85) in order to have an effective CTC of 100% (against a level 88).

Why is the CTC cap important?

The primary responsibility of the tank isn’t to take as little damage as possible, but to take damage in a predictable and healable manner. When you are below the CTC cap, melee swings can do 100% damage, 70% damage, 40% damage, or 0% damage to you, and your healers have to be prepared to heal you up from a 100% swing, even if they’d rather be helping someone who, say, lagged in the fire. Reaching the CTC cap means you’ll never take another 100% hit – the most your healers have to be prepared to heal you up from is a 70% swing. This makes it easier for them to deal with other players and mechanics, because they can trust you never to take a spike from a white swing.

That said, reaching the CTC cap is an option, not a requirement. If you decide it’s not for you, that’s fine.

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!

Protection Warrior Leveling Specs

One thing I’ve noticed a lot when talking to or just inspecting newer protection warriors is a lack of perspective on their talent trees. This is only to be expected, of course – no one goes into a new class with a complete understanding of how it ticks. The surprising thing is that, with exceptions, the people who did some research into their specs are among the worst off. They’ll read a guide that tells them for example that Improved Revenge and maxing Shield Specialization are optional, and that Toughness and Anticipation are mandatory; and though this is certainly true at level 80, a level 24 warrior specced into 5/5 Anticipation and 5/5 Toughness is making life a lot harder for himself than it needs to be.

A leveling spec is a work in progress, and what’s best for the spec at any given moment may not be what’s best for the spec in the long run. New levels bring changes to your abilities, talents, playstyle and gear, and your speccing priorities should change with them. It’s important to take into account not just what will be good at level 80, but also what’s good right now.

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.