Matticus from World of Matticus recently made a post where he confessed to a few mistakes (and evil deeds) that he has done in the past. He mentiones, for example, faking a disconnect by quitting Vent and stopping casting spells while he was the bomb on Astromancer Solarian, just because he was in the mood that day to watch everyone go flying. At the end of his post, he asked a simple question,
What’s the most colossal mistake you’ve ever made that you’re willing to admit to?
As soon as I read that question, one instance instantly popped into my mind. This story took place back in March, and my guild had finally reached 5/6 on SSC, and decided to start venturing into TK. We had already downed Void Reaver and Solarian before (putting us at 2/4), but we wanted to finally give A’lar a shot. My raid leader (and my guild leader) specifically requested I be there, as I had demonstrated by ability for being a good add courier the previous raid. I had given him my word. Additionally, I was a little bit behind the rest of the group in terms of gear, as I had been carried to the point where I was. Because of this, I needed as much DKP as I could possibly get.
Unfortunately, I had also just gotten a girlfriend, and it was one whom I don’t see very often. She called the day before the raid and told me she specifically freed up time the next day (the day of the raid) so she could come and see me. You can probably already see the problem I faced. You probably see two options here;
I, however, saw a third option. I spent most of the afternoon setting up WoW on my laptop, and arranging all my add-ons. The evening arrived, and my girlfriend showed up at my door. We went down to my basement, so we could have some privacy (and play with the Wii, which she was a huge fan of). Raid time drew near, and I opened up my laptop and logged in to WoW. Wanting to get the DKP for the night, I did something that was highly discouraged; I joined the raid group even though I wasn’t planning on raiding that night.
However, lady luck was not with me this night, and we were low on tanks, and my raid leader requested I go as our first off tank. I’ll spare you the agony of the whole situation, but I’ll highlight a few more interesting moments.
We wiped once on the boss due to our new warrior add tank having line of sight issues. The raid leader called for a 10 minute recess so we can all recollect ourselves. He took me into a private channel, and told me that he knew that I wasn’t giving it my all, and he had noticed I was in my kitty gear all along. He asked me if I wanted to stay in the raid and actually try, or take the night off (he was generous enough to offer me the night off without giving me a DKP penalty for leaving unannounced). I apologized to my girlfriend, ran to get a mouse (I was on my laptop, remember?), and turned on my music. Surprisingly, this is the one fight where I truly proved myself to the raid leader, and the rest of the guild. We all remember it clearly, because of one little thing that happened.
The way my guild does A’lar is to have two tanks leap frogging A’lar from platform to platform. We then have an add courier (my job) that grabs adds as they appear, and brings them to a fourth and final tank who’s sitting on the bottom floor “collecting” all the adds from the courier. I was already fairly well known from our last attempt a few nights ago, as I was doing my job perfectly, picking up the adds exactly when I needed to, and delivering them successfully each time. I was using my abilities intelligently, and I was positioning myself correctly.
However, it was getting late, and we were all a bit tired. Without realizing it, one of our main tanks (the guild/raid leader!) accidentally positioned himself on the platform in a way that he was out of site of the healers. He quickly died. I was nearby getting ready to pick up the add and noticed him fall. I used Feral Charge to get to the boss as quickly as I could, and positioned myself on the edge so the healers could get me. I tanked Al’ar right there the whole time, and the second he flew away, I threw a battle rez (without waiting for a proper brez request from the raid leader) to the fallen tank. I threw a healing touch on him, as well as a quick Mark of the Wild. I then shifted into bear and properly transported the add to our add collector. The tank was in position and ready to take on A’lar the next time his turn came around. That was the first time we downed A’lar.
Just goes to show you, you can completely mess up and let your raid down, and still end up on top. I wouldn’t recommend it though, ;)
Continuing from the last segment, where we covering gearing a Feral Druid from a new 70 up through instances and heroics, we’re going to continue and gear your Druid up through T4 instances. This will include Karazhan, Gruul’s, and Mag’s. By this point I’m going to assume you’re able to run these raids enough times that you can get enough badges to get all the badge gear, although you won’t be able to do so immediately. It will all come in time, however. I will also include higher-end crafted items that you should now start being able to afford.
For clarification, each level of gear described below is not absolute. What I mean by that is that just because I show a row of items doesn’t mean you have to get all those items before the gear becomes viable. Go and download Rawr, install it, play around with it, and learn to use it. When you obtain a new item, let Rawr now, and then re-optimize. Rawr isn’t perfect, but it can be a tremendous help for you, and save you a LOT of time. Again, remember to tell it to keep “% Chance to be Crit” at “<= 0″ when optimizing.
Well, let’s not waste any more time, and get to it!
Okay, so you’re starting to find heroics getting easier and easier. You’ve got more than enough health and armor for any situation, and your healers love you. You’re also starting to run out of gear you can get without raiding. So you look to your guild and at other with similar interests to yourself, and you all head into Karazhan. After running that for a while, you generate enough interest for a larger group and run both Gruul’s and Mag’s. You start to see a fairly steady stream of [Badge of Justice] flowing in, and with your good gear money is starting to be less and less of an issue. This is where the game really starts to shine and you start to have your most fun tanking the huge guys with millions of health.
You’ll notice that even though we break through the T4 barrier, a few items are still from the last gear level. Another thing you’ll notice is we broke through the 30% barrier. If possible, try to have above 30% dodge (buffed) before you go into Karazhan. Just add this as another parameter to Rawr and it should do the rest, ;)
Again, keep in mind this is an optimized solution created by Rawr. In most cases (including the case where you don’t have EXACTLY the setup below), there will be items better than the ones listed below. For example, [Slikk's Cloak of Placation] is a much better cape overall, but turns out to be worse in the one instance below. Again, use Rawr yourself for your best outcome, ;)
(Note: [Idol of Terror] makes an excellent alternative for the idol below. See the comments for discussion about this trinket vs. [Idol of Ursoc])
Let’s go ahead and gear up as follows:
| Head | Neck | Shldrs | Back | Chest | Wrists | Hands | Waist | Legs | Feet | Finger | Finger | Trinket | Trinket | Wep | Idol |
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The biggest difference you’ll notice is that our health, armor, and dodge are a LOT higher. In fact, you should hit the armor cap once you’re all raid buffed up, which along with the dodge will result in you receiving a lot less damage. Your healers will love you for this! =D
If you have all of the above gear, you will find yourself with the following statistics (self-buffed with MotW):
| Health: 17697 (T) 16804 (NE) | Armor: 32730 (T) 32752 (NE) | Dodge: 36.92% (T) 38.67% (NE) |
| Miss: 6.12% | Mitigation: 73.24% (T) 73.25% (NE) | Dodge + Miss: 43.04% (T) 44.79% (NE) |
| Total Mitigation: 82.88% (T) 83.36 (NE) | Chance to be Crit: -0.06% | Overal Points: 116515.6 (T) 114211.3 (NE) |
| Limited Threat: 950.52 (T) 933.50 (NE) | Unlimited Threat: 1223.58 (T) 1206.884 (NE) |
I had finished writing up the whole T5 raid section and had picked out most of the gear we’d be using, and even built a pretty little table for it all, when Rawr crashed out when I tried Optimizing. After numerous restarts and trying a few more computers, it seems Rawr crashes if you have too many items picked out as “available.” I’ve been talking with the developer for the past two days, and hopefully will have a copy that works soon. This post was originally going to cover T4 and T5, but due to the freeze up I’ve temporarily forgone the T5, but didn’t want to just leave the T4 information sitting in my box as a draft, so here it is.
Next time, we’ll venture into SSC, TK, and ZA!
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