Yeah Quasi, at 350 you can skin beasts up to level 70 – almost anything in Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra – and continue to skill up. You don’t have to go back to Netherstorm.
I’ve done the two prereqs, but haven’t tried the big one yet. I managed to steal Silvermoon’s flame without much trouble - after grabbing it I bubbled and ran away, and actually managed to get out of combat while still within Silvermoon’s walls, and was able to mount up and ride out easily. I don’t anticipate the other cities being as easy, though. Then again, I managed to honor the elders in the Horde cities during the Lunar Festival.
Man, I can always tell when I’ve been gone for a few days, 'cause there’s so much catching up to do! I started reading this thread around probably 4:30… and only now, an hour later (and almost half an hour since my work day was over) am I hitting “Submit Reply” and going the hell home. 
As has been observed, Savage Saronite is PvP gear. You can always spot it because it has Resilience. Whenever possible, avoid gear like that unless you’re using it for PvP–it spends its “stat budget” on things that are relatively useless for PvE play.
Other way around: Frost are the current top-tier badges and hard to obtain; Triumphs drop off of everything else. You’ll want to save your Frost badges for the best upgrades there (I’d recommend starting with the tanking trinket, which will cost you 60), while you upgrade the rest of your gear with Triumph badges.
However, all of this badge gear will not be useable for you until level 80.
Ignore GS. Put it the hell out of your mind. The only thing you should care about using it for is a fast-and-dirty way to guess who to put your Vigilance on in an instance. The sooner you stop caring about your GS, the better off you will be.
As a Prot War, here’s how you should gem:
1.) Austere Earthsiege in your meta gem slot in your helm, assuming it has one.
2.) Nightmare Tear in the non-blue gem slot that will give you the biggest Stamina bonus to activate the meta gem. You can skip this gem if you don’t have a meta slot yet.
3.) Defense gems to your cap (535 if you’re only running Heroics; 540 if you want to even attempt to set foot in a raid). Preferably stick these in yellow slots.
4.) Stamina everything else. Ignore gem slot colors.
The Savage set is a PvP set, which means it has two stats that aren’t totally useless for tanking: Stamina and Resilience. Here’s a breakdown of exactly why PvP gear is bad for you.
1.) The Stamina, itself, is good.
2.) Resilience reduces your chance to be crit, which is good, in that it counts towards that cap you need to hit. However, Defense is much better, because in addition to reducing your chance to be crit, it also reduces your chance to be hit and increases your chance to Block, Dodge, or Parry.
3.) *All *of the rest of the item budget will be spent on DPS stats. None of it will go towards important tanking stats like Dodge, Parry, Block Rating, or Block Value.
Replace “really freaking hard” with “almost impossible,” with the possibility of it happening at all vanishing quickly as the tank’s total Defense or the healer’s gear and skill get lower.
Again, STOP LOOKING AT ILVL. That only tells you about the *relative stat budget *each item has. An ilvl200 tanking piece will be *infinitely *better for you than a 277 healing piece.
You want the number that shows up on your character sheet–not the rating that you get when you mouseover it.
Have everyone, including you, stand back in the corner until every mob is in place. Nobody should be hitting anything until you have aggro, too. (At least as a Pally you have ground AOE that you can stick under where everyone is standing.) Anybody who moves out early or hits something before you do deserves to die. Period.
Neeeeeever fails. 
Whoa! Gotta love that kind of karma.
IMO, both the 2- and 4-piece set bonus for Prot War T10 are amazing. Go for all four. And the 4-pc bonus is awesome enough that you’ll probably want to wear your T10 even if you have to downgrade a piece or two from a 264 non-tier item to the 258 T10. (I did, until I got all my tokens.)
Don’t forget to run VoA every week, too–you can get the gloves and legs off of Toravon.
These days, you burn through the boss so fast with a geared group that it’s usually not even worth it to break people out of them. Could just be a case of crossed priorities.
Bingo. My guess is they’re using the same locational hack that they do when they’re speed-farming nodes.
This is why I love teksLoot. I can wait to see who rolls what before I do.
1.) Hah! Glad you figured it out.
2.) It sounds like you’re setting up Vent as voice-activated. If at all possible, you should really put it on PTT (push-to-talk). It can get really annoying for everyone else in the channel if the mic is constantly turning on and off when the person isn’t saying anything.
WOOHOO!
… Now you get to do it all over again in Heroic.
As has been observed, it’s the first one. However, even if it were the one you get when you hover over, YES, YOU SHOULD **ABSOLUTELY **PUT IN A GEM (or a chant or whatever) TO PICK UP THE LAST TWO POINTS. If you have any chance at all to be critically hit by a boss–which for an 80 is anything under 535 for Heroics or 540 for raids–you are not qualified to tank. Period.
Yay! We’ll have to try it out sometime soon.
:smack:
1.) You could go in as DPS first to start building a tanking set. Some people do.
2.) Don’t worry about the GS–once your Defense is 535 or 540, your gear should be good enough for the rest of it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is too full of themselves.
3.) You cannot queue for or even enter a Wrath Heroic until you are level 80.
As a Prot War, you’ll want to check the vendors in Tanks for Everything for your tier gear and the badge vendors in your faction enclave for everything else. The Alliance badge vendors are in a room that’s off the portal room–look for a staircase across from the portals–and the Horde vendors are in a room that, IIRC, is up the same stairs as the inn, but to the left instead of the right.
For making shopping lists, you might want to check Wowhead instead. Easier to create filters (e.g., so you don’t have to page past a bunch of Cloth gear). You can search for Emblem of Frost or Emblem of Triumph and then click on the tab that shows what they’re currency for–or you can just go to the search page and filter it so that you only see, say, items of Plate armor that can be purchased with Emblems of Triumph.
Heirloom gear is bought with Emblems of Heroism (PvE gear) or Stone Keeper’s Shards (PvP gear). Hero badges are no longer dropped in the game, but can be downgraded to from any higher-level badge. The Shards drop off of bosses when your faction controls Wintergrasp, and they’re also awarded for completing weekly quests in WG.
You will get much better gear for yourself by purchasing Triumph badge gear, so you’ll probaby wait to buy any Heirlooms for alts until you’ve got yourself kitted out.
IMO, report him anyway. *And *whisper his GM (or a guild officer, if the GM isn’t online).
Outside the entrance to the ToC raid. If the ToC 5-man entrance is at 3 o’clock, the raid entrance is at 6 o’clock.
Unless they removed those vendors, that’s incorrect. As of the last time I looked, you could buy any and all Triumph badge gear at the AT grounds.
Yup–which is why we had to wipe BQL when our next Shadowmourne-farmer died on that stage of the quest: if no one’s on the shard-collecting stage, the bosses just won’t drop them.
Would be pretty stupid otherwise, IMO. One full Shadowmourne is worth infinitely more than two half-completed ones.
Of course, if they’re at range, they might not have pulled at all. They have to pass 130% of the leader’s threat to peel off the tank if they’re standing at range; in melee, it’s only 110%. Much lower margin for error, and they need to start burning their threat dumps sooner and more often.
He was still 70 last year, with level-70 loot. His mechanics are just a PITA to solo for most classes.
Best tip I got: Scroll your camera all the way out, point it straight down, and follow the torch shadow. Preferably, find someplace out of the way to do this, so you have free space on the ground.
If this is the same “toss and catch X torches in Y seconds” as always, this is actually much easier than the initial torch quest, since it uses the toys that you can target where they land. Just point your camera down at yourself, put your toy torches on your action bar, and spam the action bar button while spam-clicking on yourself. Easy-peasy.
Awesome guys! Thanks! I wasn’t looking forward to having Silka dodge those blades again.
But I have to mention this again: Have y’all ever flown your mounts so long they get tired? That really took me aback and made me feel more than a little guilty. (Big into RP, dontcha know? :))
Thanks
Q
A’ight. I’ll probably wait until I have a few more tanking pieces and see where those put my Defense, before I start socketing any more +Defense gems. I still need a tanking cloak, bracers, libram, rings, and trinkets. Then I’ll socket as necessary, and then I’ll start trying to tank 
It didn’t get any better after you left. We wiped once more on PP before moving on to one shot Princes and two shot Dreamwalker.
Of course once they switch my tank out for my shaman all the tanking items dropped, not that I need them, but still. Up until then a lot of nice shaman items had dropped. Loot hates me.
At least I had the small accomplishment of coming in as top heals on all three attempts on Dreamwalker. Over a holy paladin, disc priest (yes I was counting absorbs as well), and another shaman. 70k+ Healing Wave crits are awesome.
I personally hate VoA, but I guess I’ll give it a go. Otherwise it’ll take me months to save up enough emblems for the rest of the set.
Truth. I look at it like this: GS=Grape Soda. Grape Soda good! Gear Score bad. Forget about Gearscore and start thinking about Grape Soda!
I’m starting to use this mantra in my 10mans when people ask about simple concepts that apply to most bosses.
Don’t stand in the thing.
Run when the boss says stuff.
When people die, things get complicated.
Sure there are exceptions, but usually standing in stuff is bad. When the boss says something he’s about to use an important skill. If enough people die the encounter could become a lot more difficult to overcome.
I’ve been tanking on my baby paladin, now 73, for a while and I’ve just realized that I’m not too familiar with this 969 rotation that I’m supposed to be doing. I know of it… I just can’t be sure if I’m doing it right.
So far I’ve had no problems with aggro, but there have been times when nothing is off cooldown and I’m just whacking at stuff. Maybe it’s just me coming from a prot war where I’m always pressing something, but it just feels weird. Is it something I should go ahead and get used to now or can I continue with my mostly random mashing of buttons?
That’s what I said when I saw people complaining about the achievement this year, then I tried it myself. Blizzard has messed with the timing so it’s really hard to do it this year, I was beginning to think my mouse button would break before I pulled it off.
And it works fine for me in cases like that, sort’a like instant nicknames. Heck, five minutes ago one of my coworkers didn’t remember another one’s name and adressed him as “Beard”. But when the group is sitting around in a VH pause and the names are more or less pronunceable…
My own pallie has been guilty of saying “Do y’all think this might be the pinkest group ever?”, prompting general laughter except for the DK, who started grouching that he was No Way A Bubble Boy. Then another one of the four pinkies said “admit it, you used to be one of us before you went over to the dark side…” Silly is good, so long as it doesn’t get the group dead.
Take this with a grain of salt, since my pally tank is only 70, but I think the point of 969 is that you always have a button to hit on every GCD. I can’t do it yet because I don’t have Shield of Righteousness – do you? I was thinking pallies learned that at 73 but my healadin just hit 73 and didn’t pick it up, so maybe you don’t have it yet either. If you don’t have SoR, you will have gaps in your 969 rotation.
Wasn’t doing brilliantly at #1 last night, sorry bout that. (As well as #4 - if you’re tanking, don’t turn your back on the boss; must learn to strafe more effectively).
As I understand it, you’re supposed to get 2 points in the ret talent that reduces the cooldown on your judgments - do you have that? Only thing I can think of off the top of my head.
Only one, you need Judgment to be ready every nine seconds.
Hammer of the Righteous and Shield of Righteousness are the 6 second abilities, while Judgment, Holy Shield and (usually) Consecrate are the 9 second abilities. You don’t do anything with a cast time as part of the rotation, as the goal is to use every single GCD effectively. Glyph and talent Divine Plea and always have it running, you won’t get nearly enough healing to keep your mana up in heroics without it.
The rotation is simple enough:
1)Judge
A) HotR
2) HS
B) ShR
3) Cons
A) HotR
- Judge
B) ShR - HS
A) HotR - Cons
B) ShR
Repeat from the top. Once you get used to it, you’ll be able to throw bubbles, taunt, and toss other things into it without losing rhythm. The usual things to drop are either HS (when you’re not getting enough healing to keep up mana) or Cons (when you’re not holding more than three mobs. You’ll likely want to be judging mana though your seal use will vary by instance and group (Corruption for threat/damage, Justice for large packs of weak mobs, Wisdom when you need mana).
So I logged in last night with plenty of time before the BDL raid so I did my random (H-UP) very quickly. We had a mage doing over 6k dps and a warrior doing 4.5k so we broke a couple of my records for downing bosses there (we did Skadi in 28 seconds!).
Still having time, I tested out the new holiday boss feature of the dungeon finder. I didn’t think I needed any of the gear that Ahune drops, and I got the non-combat pet on my only run last year, but I thought I should do it once. So we get in, down the boss without much trouble, and he drops a cloak that I pass on. I also get an ice bag of goodies but I forget to open it.
Later I mention in guild chat that I already have the Ahune pet from last year and they tell me it’s a different pet now - so I start thinking about running Ahune daily for it. But as we’re buffing up for the raid, I see the ice sack in my bags and open it – and there is the Ice Chip pet! Woot! Also, I hadn’t realized you get two Frost emblems for Ahune – so it looks like I’ll be doing him all week after all.
Shield of the Righteousness is a level 75 skill, so I’m a couple of levels away from that.
Right now I’m tanking with Seal of Corruption and Judging Wisdom. Here’s my armory if you want to look it over and make any comments World of Warcraft
Looking over the rotation you’ve posted I’ve been messing up a bit, then again I’m still missing shield of righteousness. I have been pretty good at bubbling people/cleansing when it’s needed. Guess I’ll rearrange my skill bar and give it a go when the servers come back up.
Hah ! Tanked my first raid boss in 10 mans yesterday (Toravon) and tonight I should be able to get that Frost emblem tank trinket, taking me beyond 35k unbuffed. I’m movin up, baby!
Ugh. Only had 20 people online last night, so we just cleared out Freya, Mimi, and Vez to get ready for Yogg+0. Tried to find an ICC10 group, and since it was Monday night, ended up joining a raid that was just going after LK on the condition that I could reserve the tanking axe. Allegedly everyone in the group knew the fight. Heh. Apparently not–had shit happen like the Mage getting Necrotic Plague and just standing there instead of bringing it over to where I was tanking the adds. And then the RL and one other person mysteriously DC’d–maybe weather-related, or maybe a stealth log.
Especially frustrating was that after I’d already zoned in–getting myself saved–but before we’d re-filled the raid after an initial member had had to leave before we started, I got a whisper from a guildie on her main. One of her alts is in our guild, but her main is in the top raiding guild on the server–IIRC, they’re ranked around #150 worldwide, which gives you some idea of how awesome they are. She asked me what I was doing in ICC, and when I told her 10-m LK to go after my axe, she said, “Oh, you should have come with us! We had to take an alt tank. You could have done it on Heroic and gotten an even better axe!” :smack::smack::smack: Oh well. I let her know that I don’t have a regular ICC10 group, so fingers crossed that I can join them this week.
ETA: Ahune and his adds are **completely immune **to Frost damage. That’s deeply stupid. Thanks for rendering my Mage’s main spec *ENTIRELY FUCKING USELESS *against the encounter.
Fatigue is what happens when you start running off the edge of the map–whether you’re mounted or on your own (which would mean swimming). Even if you were to stop and hover in place, your Fatigue bar would keep running down. When it hits zero, you die. So if you get it, go back to solid land ASAP!
It’s pretty faceroll these days–and if your group isn’t going to be capable, it usually only takes one or two attempts to figure that out. I don’t care for it much, either, but I hold my nose and hop in anyway (for a chance at DPS T10, for badges, and for a chance at the mount–which, when it drops, always seems to go to some asshole who sucked at their job).
Lies. Artificial grape flavor is disgusting.
Weird. Did you try upping the number of torches you were using? I should play around with it.
That’s awesome.
Some people have all the luck. Grats!
Woohoo! The trinket is indeed beauteous.
Ah. I was considering pulling my DK tank out of semi-retirement to run these. Thanks for letting me know I needn’t bother.
Seriously faceroll. Last VOA25 I was in people weren’t even making a real effort to avoid the frosty balls; we were just healing right through them.
Everyone’s got such a goddamn attitude in VOA, though. One guy started spazzing because we had 4 DKs in the raid. Dude, it’s a PUG, be prepared to take what you can get.
Am now wearing a full set of Tempered Saronite (have banked the Savage for if I decide to try PvP some day). Should be able to get my random in today which should get me over halfway to 79. Found the embled gear sellers in the portal section of Dalaran and saw some kit i’m salivating over. Need to check out Tanks for everything to make sure I don’t miss a trick. Have 30 emblems at the moment so the decision will be whether to buy a piece of 40 emblem kit or whether to be patient and save up 75. Is there an optimum order to buy gear in?
VOA25 is the only 25-man raid I’ll run, because it doesn’t require reaction time or, really, thought, and so it doesn’t matter that my computer is slooooooow as long as I know to spam tab to switch to the frost orbs and then continue blindly hitting my dps keys.
Unless you have specific itemization needs that certain gear will fulfill, you’re usually best off getting the cheap stuff first. Badges do you no good if you don’t spend them, while a new pair of gloves translates into immediate improvement. You’re going to spend the same amount of badges either way, so you might as well get the easy stuff as quickly as you can.