Wrath incoming and last updates

With the new patch a lot of changes has taken place in the tanking duties.
As far as i (sadly) could see, threat now it's no more a problem to build, and this will easier our work in building massive threat, giving us time to spend debuffing/buffing and making dps (yeah finally we can output some damage too!).

On boss encounters i noticed i'm on 80% of the encounter time on full rage bar, spamming SS, Rev, Dev, Dev and smashing infinite Heroic Strikes with no prob.
S&B it's a sweetie every war must not miss, free SS in the face of mobs it's awesome, and Vigilance it's a nice utility to build more threat, and it's a nice buff to minimize damage if u have 2 warriors tanking that buff each other.

I'm trying 5/3/53 spec atm, and it seems working good, but i'm planning to remove Puncture and Focused Rage points to test a more defensive build since rage seems not to be a problem to manage.

Loot update: i finally manage to get my Bulwark of Azzinoth, after more then a year dreaming on it, and some other nice tanking piece like The Brutalizer, Myrmidon's Treads and my 5th T6 item, Onslaught Shoulderguards.

Update

Added a piece to my threat set, the nice Gauntlets of Enforcement.
What the future holds is still uncertain, there's some trouble in the guild actually, so maybe this will be my last gear improvement for some time... we'll see...

Fury of the Sunwell

First attempts in Sunwell Plateau on Kalecgos for me, things went pretty cool, after some stupid wipes at trash pulls (damn scouts) managed to several attempts on the dragon boss, groups rotations went fixed very soon, but some healing problem made us going home with Kalec and Sathrovarr at 15% as best try.

Tanking achievements

From some day with my first Teron Gorefiend as MT, I finally can say I tanked all bosses in TBC (SWP excluded and drood bosses). I feel like I'm cursed on loots. Still didn't manage to take my T6 shoulders or other good pieces in BT. Let's see what the future has to bring...

For who has not yet seen it, that's the new Wrath of the Lich King cinematic Intro.

The Fall of the Betrayer

Last night got my first Illidan (one of my favourite characters) tanking + kill, after some tries. The slain was pretty intense, and was quite happy about not fxxking up too much :)
Loot of the day: Onslaught Chestguard
I'm starting becoming comfortable with new keybindings and, I must admit, they're the only way to follow. Noticed increased sustained TPS as soon as i started using them in a decent way. Let's see if I can bring out some more in the future.
And now, a little movie from WCIII about Illidan waking the nagas (funny note:in the movie if you hear the nagas screeches, you can clearly catch the "dying naga" WoW sound).

BT report

Cleared all remaining bosses in there till Illidan himself.
After a bad experience with the Flames of Azzinoth two weeks ago, I experienced my first Illidan tanking.
Things went pretty well, I managed to avoid all incoming Shear with no much problem, got only the first one and with a lucky combination of avoidance and healing managed to stay alive :)
By the way got only time for a couple of tries, and a Flame accident, and a Demon phase accident, made this encounter to be moved to next raid.

So my wildest wet dreams of about 1 year about tanking Illidan myself finally became reality, and the emotion was pretty intense. No loot to mention this time too. Bad luck keep breathing on my neck :)

A neck discussion

In the last months, i was thinking about what pre-SWP neck it's better for our tanking needings.
Talking about end-game necks, we got three possibilities: Brooch of Deftness, Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve, Pendant of Titans.

Let's keep Pendant last.
We can see Brooch of Deftness has +9 hit rating and +3 expertise rating than Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve. On the other side, the real power behind this Pendant it's the buff you get on hit (Scryers: +100 expertise rating, Aldor: +100 dodge rating, 10 sec. durability, 45 sec. internal cooldown)

I read around that in a boss fight, u can avoid ALL parries after hitting 45 weapon expertise skill. So if you're Scryer, with this pendant you can hit that cap without wearing all that much expertise gear about 10 sec every minute.
We all know that parries are one of the tank worst enemies, cause of the increased boss swing time on next hit, and on bosses that can 3 shot us, that's a very nice survivability point.
More than this, having this lot of expertise, grant us a huge threat boost, so it is better than +9 hit and +3 expertise rating? For me, yes.

If you're Aldor, +100 dodge rating proc is very good as well, making this neck your choice for pure avoidance fights (get in count that dodge = no rage). Switch on Brooch of Deftness when you don't need this much avoidance and need to TPS more.

Let's now take a look at Pendant of Titans. Its defense and dodge and hit rating stats, makes him a nice mix of avoidance and threat item. Maybe the on equip: + 25 dodge rating is more desirable in SWP.
So what to choice? I'll say, if you can, take all of them and use the more suitable for the fight you are gonna have.

BT report

Seen lot of tanking items tonight, didn't manage to loot much by the way :)
Taken home only Pauldrons of Abyssal Fury for my avoidance set.
Reached RoS then a blackout drop me offline after saying hello to Essence of Desire...

update: added rss feed to this blog, so you can easily track for updates :)

First!

Hello fellas, I'm starting this blog as a joke, to share with you my tanking experience as well as our achievements or discussions about the wonderful tanking class in World of Warcraft.

Now something about my background.
I started playing pre-TBC in EU-Crushridge, a quite laggy and spammy server. After some Arms/Fury leveling without really know what i was doing, I discovered the tanking duty. Someone was teaching me about "Just spam Sunder Armor and wait for the boss to die", while i was farming my complete Valor set and was looking for fire res gear to enter MC.

Then TBC hit the stores, and a new era began.
Transfered to EU-Jaedenar, a most stable and nice realm to play.
Leveled to 70 in full protection spec (lol) and learned how to really tank, istance after istance, reputation after reputation, then started gearing for Karazhan, the first TBC raid.
Obtained cool progress in there, before the big nerf given to the place, when Moroes was still a pain to down; still remember the first Shade of Aran kill, where our GM said "Ok guys, we're killing him tonight, cause tomorrow the patch will nerf him." (lol)
After some reorganization, we started a new guild, and after some months got my first main tank spot, reaching a nice guild progress of SSC 5/6, TK 3/4, MH 3/5, BT 1/6 before our guild shutdown.
Now I'm still here, another guild, still tanking, still learning, got the opportunity to face new encounters, in this time focusing on MH and BT full clear.

Hope to put in this something useful, and hoping to get feedback from all of you, threatbuilders all around the globe :)