winterhawk11, this is my third 80, and I’ve only been playing him a ton the past two weeks, with a few months in there last year to level him up / get him heroic ready, so there really hasn’t been time to get the ret stuff 
Ah well though, I’ll just put my head down and grind out triumph till I’m done
Sounds like you’re doing great! Don’t pay too much attention to me–I’m a nervous tank until I’ve got gear that’s easily good enough (or more than good enough) for whatever I’m doing. Afterward I’m fine, but before that I usually go for DPS.
Bear tanking is just as easy, except you replace Consecrate with Swipe.
If you want to give it a try, specific queue for a dungeon you’ll feel confident tanking in. Go all the way back to Ramps if you have to, that’s what I did when I started bear tanking on Kah. Once you get your confidence up you can go back to random dungeons.
Kind of a busy week for me. My newly merged ICC10 group made it all the way to Sindragosa, which is quite a feat concidering my original group couldn’t make it past Putricide. I’m sure we would have gotten her down, but some genius scheduled both our second ICC10 day and our ICC25 on the same night so we only spent an hour messing around in 10 man.
This kind of leads me to a slightly awesome story… so our 10man is wiping on BQL so they have me switch from my tank to my shaman to 3 heal it and we one shot her without any problems. So we go on to Dreamwalker and get past her easy enough, but what does she drop? The tanking gun… the gun my warrior could use except I’m on my shaman. We go sacrifice ourselves to Sindragosa and form up for the 25 man.
I bring my tank in for the 25 man and we’re clearing trash to Marrow when guess what drops? Rowans Rifle of Silver Bullets! Everyone from our 10man is laughing and they’re going to give it to me but they make me roll on it to be fair and I roll a 100. Guess I really REALLY wanted that thing. Then the BoE tanking ring drops on the next pull, followed by the Agility DPS necklace.
We only downed the first four bosses so we can start progressing on Sunday. Last week we had Putricide down to .5% before we wiped. Here’s hoping we actually get him down this week.
Which brings me to this question. I’ve only got one piece of T10 for my warrior, the rest are drops from 10/25 man. Should I be going for at least the 2 piece bonus or go all the way for 4 piece. We aren’t doing anything super difficult and I don’t have any problems with survivability. I just want to know if I can save my badges to buy saronite to craft the tanking boots for my paladin when he hits 80, or spend them on tier and hope that I can get a token drop in 25 man.
The way I look at it is like this–you’re the first stop in keeping everyone in the party from dying. Everyone has a role to play, but the truth of the matter is that there is an excess in DPS and a deficit in tanks, so if they’re screwing up, they are more easily replaced than you are. If they refuse to listen to your (reasonable) directions, let them die. If they keep doing it and causing wipes, kick them–you’ll have a new DPS in seconds anyways.
With HoR in particular though (tanking regular in my case, as I’ve not run it yet on Heroic as a tank–so you can take what I say with a grain of salt), I like to make the kill order/corner strategy clear right at the start and may even request that DPS avoid using AOE on the waves since that seems to be great at overriding my threat/aggro (at least in regular HoR). If they ignore me after making that clear, well, I’ll just let them die. HoR and H-HoR is no place to mess around, IMO.
Thursday night was a sad, sad night for heroics. I’d worked an 11-hour shift, and had about three hours before I had to get myself to bed for a 12-hour shift on Friday, so I figured I had enough time to run each of my three 80s through one heroic. Only ended up being able to do two of them.
First up was my human pally: Oculus. No problem, I don’t mind Oculus, and don’t have any trouble with it. After we downed the first boss, four of us got our drakes and a flew up to the next stage. After a couple minutes had gone by and the fifth member of the group, a balance druid, had failed to join us (and hadn’t even mounted up), the tank finally asked her, “First time in here?” Turned out it was. The tank was surprisingly kind and patient, and gave polite, helpful instructions to help this first-timer, moving at a reasonable pace so this person could keep up and explaining what to do. But, after two groups of Mage-Lord Urom’s summons, the druid just dropped without saying anything. We found a replacement quickly, though, and finished out the instance (and in the process took down Urom faster than any group I’ve ever been in - he never even got off one of his big explosions.
So next up was my draenei mage: Utgarde Keep. Hooray! This should be quick and easy, seeing as how UK is the easiest heroic in NR. What a nightmare it turned out to be. Had a gnome DK tank, who was the only one in the group better-geared than me. He moved at a glacial pace, standing around dithering before each and every pull (for the first time ever, I was tempted to be the guy saying, “Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!”) The hunter kept “accidentally” pulling. The tank turned out to be almost completely incapable of grabbing and holding aggro, and it was fortunate that I sort of play my mage like my paladin, in that I’ve gotten good at fighting off mobs that are right on top of me - I have to use all of my available tools to do so, but I can usually keep myself alive if I have to. (I usually only need to do this when the mobs have gotten past the melee types and are going for the healer, and now it’s up to me to get them off the healer - I figure it’s more important to keep the healer alive than keep myself alive.)
So we finally got to the first boss, and wiped on the first attempt, mainly due to the tank’s inability to hold aggro. Also, I seemed to be the only one who knew what to do when that boss Frost Tombs somebody. On the second attempt, the healer died to the summoned skeletons, then the tank died, and finally we three DPS finished off the boss. But not before he Frost Tombed me when he had 1 HP left. The other two DPS proceeded to stand there doing nothing while the Frost Tomb slowly killed me. So the healer and I ran back, and the tank took his own sweet time making his own way back. Then the fury warrior asked, “Should I switch to my tank gear?” I guess this offended the DK tank, because he proceeded to drop group.
So we requeued with the warrior choosing the tank role, and the DK tank was replaced with another warrior. The new tank proved even less able to hold aggro. We worked our way through the trash before the next boss, and the healer couldn’t toss a heal and I couldn’t cast a spell without instantly pulling aggro off the tank onto ourselves, no matter how long we held off to give the new tank time to build threat.
Long story short, I never made it to the second boss. I quit after dying for the fourth time. In UK. Sigh. I’m too patient.
So I queued for a new dungeon, and of course this time I got Forge of Souls, my <sarcasm> favorite heroic </sarcasm>. However, it went surprisingly well. One wipe that was probably the fault of me, the warlock, or both of us - on our way down that tunnel to face the Devourer of Souls, we got aggro from the patrol just outside the entrance to that tunnel while the group was still fighting the first mob inside the tunnel. But after we ran back we made it to Devourer of Souls and took her down with relative ease.
By that time, my three hours were up and I had to get myself to bed, so no heroic for my belf pally.
I had a bit of time this afternoon and got into a good PuG for ICC-10; we did Festergut and Rotface in one try each; got Putricide down to about 300k our first try and then took him out on the second, at which point I and several others had to go. Still, I’ve now done 6 ICC bosses (still missing the second one), am up to 2 pieces of T10 and 2 other ICC gear pieces, and got to Friendly with the Ashen Verdict and picked up the ring. All to the good.
Honest to freaking God, what is wrong with people once they ding about 65? It’s been constant FAIL with random since then. Currently at the start of the Auchenai Crypts and on our 3rd or 4th tank since starting the damn thing and we haven’t even cleared the first mob. First tank said she just hit Tank because she was tired of waiting in the queue, and the most recent one seemed promising until he had to go.
I just…random dungeons were so easy before, and now it’s massive fail. Like everyone decided to suddenly try to tank for the first time at 65.
I think the later Outland instances are authentically a LOT harder than anything that has come before (except maaaybe some of the higher-level old-world instances). I remember that the Burning Dogs alt group suddenly started dying a lot more when we hit the level 65-66 or so dungeons.
My son gave me $50.00 for Father’s Day (What a twist! Usually he asks ME for money! ;)) with the admonition to use it only on myself, so, since we still live with my elderly SIL and I cannot mount/install my beloved Logitech surround sound system with which to play, I thought maybe some ss headphones might be a great alternative.
I looked on ebay, and they have a good variety (some under $50.00), but I don’t recognize the brand names on any of them.
So could some of you who may have some good ones make a recommendation?
Thanks
Q
Sorry, Quasi. I have the same headphones you have now, judging from the pics you linked. I don’t know anything about surround-sound.
Question for the WoWwers…how do they do the visual spamming with toons? I’m in Orgrimmar on Garrosh right now and there are about 1st level orc warlocks standing in the air and forming words. The only way I can imagine they can coordinate that many toons to do impossible things like that is by hacking somehow.
Priiiiick. First person I’ve ever put on Ignore from a PUG. A blue 200 BOE, Stained Glass Shard Ring, dropped in Old Kingdom. Everyone Greeded or Disenchanted, but the Rogue Needed after everyone rolled. Thinking maybe he actually needed it, since it is a decent ring for new DPS, I checked his gear. A 264 ring and a 219 ring. I was appalled, but all I said was “That was a shameless ninja.” He returned with the EVER so witty, “You’re a shameless ninja.” Oooookay, so we have a 12 year old stealing from us. 
The frustrating thing was it happened right before the final boss, so what point in kicking him? Although now that I think on it, I should have, just to deny him the random badges.
It’s goldsellers. They steal a whole bunch of accounts and abuse glitches in the game to do that. Visually impressive, and obnoxious as hell.
Just a follow-up on this, because it’s kind of strange…
So I was at my friend’s house yesterday. He’d bought himself a new headset, and plugged it into the sound card. We tried Vent, and Vent wouldn’t register his voice. We logged into WoW, and used the test feature on the Voice submenu. Nothing. We went into Windows and tried using the sound recorder. Nothing. Apparently the input socket on his sound card is dead – you can hear sounds through the headset without a problem, but the microphone won’t pick up any sounds.
So we unplugged that headset and plugged the USB headset back in, and tried to figure out why he couldn’t talk on Vent with it. I tried talking in it on Vent, and it worked just fine. A second friend who was there tried talking into it on Vent, it worked for him too. But when my first friend talked into it, Vent wouldn’t pick up his voice. There’s just something about the timbre of his voice, Vent wouldn’t pick it up…
There’s a setting on the first tab of the Settings menu - I think it’s called Monitor – that’s set to a default of 60. It controls how sensitive Vent is to ‘activating’ when you talk into the microphone. Presumably that’s to help filter out background noises, etc. But in order for Vent to pick up my friend’s voice, we had to lower that sensitivity down to a value of 20. Only then would Vent pick up my friend’s voice reliably.
Strange, huh?
jayjay,
Yeah, they’re good 'phones (although the ear pads kept falling off, so we had to glue them on), but I miss the “in-front, both sides and in-back” WoW sounds.
Also from reading the above threads, I see one can use one’s microphone to speak with other players. Wanna test it out sometime with me, jay (or anyone)?
Thanks
Q
Right, that’s the ‘volume’ at which Vent activates; the lower the number, the more sensitive it is. The Monitor button just lets you see how loud your speaking voice is. I have to turn mine down to somewhere between 10-15 to get it to hear me unless I activate it with a cough or something. The frustrating thing about that is that if it’s too sensitive, a stray breath of air will turn it on.
Really, a better option is to designate an accessible key that you don’t need in WoW for Push-to-Talk. As long as you hold that down, the mic will take in all sound. You don’t need to worry about sensitivity at all that way. Unfortunately, I can’t take advantage of this, since I’m running Windows programs in Linux. If a Windows window is not in focus, it won’t accept any keypresses, so I can’t activate Vent while playing WoW. Very annoying.
Just downed the Lich King an hour ago! Been raiding that place since November, for God’s sake!
Congratulations, Kingslayer!
Something similar happened in my last random today. We were doing H:VH, and this guy just kept. On. Skinning. Even when it wasn’t his loot. Even when it was my loot, and I’m a skinner. Including the dog that drops 12 Borean Leathers.
First, the healer said something. He ignored it. Then, after finally getting to skin one in front of him, I used the /cough emote. He ignored it. Finally, after he went through a pile of corpses at breakneck speed, I said, “Hey, so you know, you’re not the only skinner in the group.”
His response? “I’m not skinning.”
Yes, he was.
This was after he, as a tank, failed to hold any kind of aggro whatsoever. So I told him he didn’t hold aggro worth shit, called him a liar, and ragequit. Shortly thereafter, the healer let him die, then ragequit along with another guildie who was DPS. The other DPS was on our server, and so I offered to pay for any repair bills that might have resulted.
Weekends are phun.
Okay, I finally picked up my fifth and final piece of T9 tank gear for my pally … and I’m once again a bit confused about this “Def cap” thing. I know the number I’m shooting for is 535 (for heroics). But I’m not sure which number I should be looking at.
In my character window, choosing “Defenses”, I see:
Defense: 508
But if I hover over that, the tooltip says, “Defense Rating 533”.
Help! Which one should be 535? If it’s the second one, should I waste a gem for 2 measly points?
… and havin’ a good ol’ time. Took the “long way around” to get to HJ, though. Didn’t know (or forgot) there was a boat out of Menethil there, so hell, we swam all along the shore till we got to the harbor with the turtles. But I digress.
Just finished a few quests in Wyrmskull Village and one of those was to open the cages of three prisoners who then proceeded to follow us around and helped us kill! That was soooo cool! First time that ever happened.
But when I went to turn the quest in one of those three (forgot the name) stayed with us and followed us back into Wyrmskull to find the battle plans.
My question is: If I had to log off, standing right next to him, would he be there when I got back? Well, I kinda answered that question myself when we got bushwacked and I died. When I rezzed myself he was gone. Guess he didn’t wanna be paired up with a dweeb or whatever.
Anyway, the Fjord is a nice change from the Tundra.
Also still enjoying the skinning and gathering the herbs! (tra-la-fuckin’-la! J/K SFG!, that’s a nice change too!)
Thanks
Q
Those NPCs stay with you for a set amount of time (just a couple minutes), then tell you they need to get back. So I doubt they’d still be there when you logged back in.