The “misty wing streamers” description makes me think Netherdrake. They come from Shadowmoon Valley, in a variety of mostly indigo hues. They’ve got a distinctive shark-like profile to their muzzles.
Something often overlooked is that the Confessor will merrily heal both herself and the Memory through her Renew spell. It can add substantial additional fight time to lower DPS groups, but can be stopped completely by interrupting her as she casts it (unlike priest Renew, it has a long cast time) or dispelling it from its target once it’s cast via something like Purge or Tranquilizing Shot. If the group’s healer is keeping people up through the Waking Nightmare and simply getting ground down by fight duration, the Confessor’s heal is usually the culprit.
Thanks! I’ll check those out. I’ve been getting a lot of recommendations for Maintankadin, so I think that’ll be my first stop, but I’m going to look at all the suggestions.
I sympathize. The other day I took my DK into ToC-5 for a random, and one of the others helpfully whispered me: “You only have Scourge Strike at rank 1”). Er…oops. When I respecced Unholy it didn’t even occur to me that I’d need to retrain anything. sigh My DPS went up quite a bit after that.
Worse…my main DK (who is my primary alt, and usually a tank) had gone Unholy nearly a month ago…and he only had SS at rank 1 as well! D’oh!
I had a disastrous HoR yesterday on my main DK, btw…entered as DPS, but after the first pair of bosses and a wipe on the Lich King encounter, the tank dropped. So…I figured I’d just switch to tank (since it’s my main spec and I’m actually quite well geared) and finish it out. I got zero support from anybody in the group (which did wonders for my confidence) and we proceeded to wipe again, with the new DPS warrior calling me all sorts of names I won’t repeat here. I dropped group. It wasn’t worth the aggravation. I know I need work on AoE tanking, especially in randoms where people don’t give you a chance to get aggro. But geez…I’ve tanked ToC-25 and ICC-25 up to Festergut and Rotface! I’ve tanked a group to 10-man Tribute to Insanity! I don’t suck as a tank…but I sure did yesterday, and I hate it when I do that. My single target tanking is definitely much better than my AoE. I don’t think I’m tabbing around enough.
This is possibly related to a bug on Blizzard’s part - if you have dual-spec while leveling it doesn’t automatically update the bars on the “off-spec” correctly. Of course it can also happen when you spec into something that has spells you can’t even get in another spec (like Scourge Strike).
I highly recommend RankWatch for everyone that has dual spec. You can turn off the spamming part and have it only watch yourself. It will notify you if you use anything other than max-rank spells.
As far as getting grief while tanking that’s just par for the course. For some reason, even though tanks are desperately in demand, it’s the one role that people feel free to call out by name from before the first pull. I just don’t understand the grief DPS’ers will give to a tank if they pull off them… all I can figure is that they have maxxed out what they can do in heroics, don’t raid, and like to be the big man in the 5-man. My hunter could pull aggro off almost every non-guild tank I run randoms with if I wanted to - it’s the sign of a good DPSer to not do that and still put up the big numbers!
Sorry for the rant, but after a good first couple of weeks it seems this new system has devolved to where groups are no longer polite and fun. I’ve been running into more and more e-peening non-raiders who think they’re the shit because they have 4-piece T9 and can do 3.5k on a boss in a 5-man and like to tell everyone about it (not a knock on non-raiders, or folks in T9 of course - just that those are the ones most likely to complain about a “nub DK tank” when they open up with Hellfire before DnD is even down).
To expand on the confirmation:
For any class that “graduates” to a higher level of armor, sending them a Heirloom item of that higher class pre-40 will downgrade it to the lower armor class, and the item will auto-upgrade to the higher class when they reach 40 and train the new proficiency. To wit: sending a Plate Heirloom to a <40 Warrior or Paladin will change it into Mail, and sending a Mail Heirloom to a <40 Hunter or Shaman will change it into Leather.
Important caveats: this only works for the cross-armor classes, and only for the official armor type of the Heirloom item. So, for example, if you send a Mail Heirloom to a <40 Rogue, it will still be Mail, and if you send a Mail Heirloom to a Paladin, it will be Mail regardless of whether the character is <40 or 40 or higher.
You can see buffs and debuffs cross-faction just fine. You just can’t talk or trade. I’ve had mixed results with inspecting; IIRC, it has something to do with whether or not you’re PvP flagged, or it could be that they pulled the ability to inspect cross-faction out of the game, or it could be zone-dependent.
IMO, as a tank who’s done a lot of endgame hardmode content, H-HoR is currently one of the hardest things to tank in the entire game. *Algalon *was easier for me than H-HoR. Because not only are you in there (a) with no other tanks to back you up, but you’re usually there (b) with a bunch of strangers, whose skills may not be matched up with your own, and who may have neither the inclination nor the ability to use their class mechanics to make the fight easier or even doable.
Ahahahaha. It’s like a bright flashing Idiot Warning Alert. Anyone who thinks they’re unbelievably awesome with T9.0 and 3.5k DPS is, by definition, a moron.
Though, heh. I don’t even have two pieces of T9 in one set yet. Even just the other day I was thrilled to finally get rid of my last piece of blue gear in my healing set.
Yeah, I believe it. I know I sucked yesterday (I was distracted because my graphics card was in the process of dying (it started right in the middle of the instance) and because I hadn’t gone in with the “tank” mindset but rather the “DPS” mindset…but still, being an ass really isn’t the way to get you what you’re looking for. It’s getting so anymore, now that my DPS set is halfway decent, I’d rather just sign up as DPS and take the time hit than sign up as a tank and take the ego hit if I mess up (or if the DPS doesn’t pay attention and pulls off me–of course that’s still my fault). I doubt I’m alone–which contributes even more to the tank shortage. I get so tired of teenage boys waving their e-peens. I seriously do. But in the end they’re just hurting themselves, because the more tanks they drive off, the more time it will take to get a group.
Sure you could, but shoot your questions here…I seldom have better answers than anyone else here, being that I have only been playing 1.5 years with just one main character and a bank alt. Half of the posters here have at least one or two characters in the BDL guild. I’m still a pup when it comes to anything beyond a ret paladin. We also have a messageboard here that you may want to pose specific guild questions. Here or there, you should get a decent answer.
Don’t take it personally - the T9 or 3.5k DPS don’t make someone a moron, it’s the bragging to an alt who probably has a main that is way better geared/skilled than you that makes someone a moron.
It’s amazing to me how quickly the change happened. Maybe I was just lucky but those first few weeks were awesome - good groups, polite conversation. There were bad players but nobody mistreated them - we all just did our best and got the job done. All of that is gone now… I don’t know if it’s because the raiders don’t run heroics anymore (not that raiders are always good or nice, of course, but they tended to just want to get the job done without the e-peen) or because the jerks now have enough gear they feel emboldened or what.
You are not alone. I made the decision last night that I am only tanking random heroics for guildmates and friends from now on. Sucks for all the DPSers in the queue, but QQ for them. Plenty of folks willing to put up with my “too slow, gogogo” “nub DK tanking” for an instant queue.
It’s an alt, I play it for fun, and getting yelled at isn’t fun.
I’ve been rapidly losing interest in starting to try running heroics the last couple weeks, thanks to virtually every LFG I see adding the requirements of a minimum gear score and “the achievement”. I’m willing to content myself with questing and leveling toons to 80, and working on various achievements that interest me rather than put up with that crap from teenagers.
Even though you’re not on my server, I’m happy to hear you’ll be playing again soon. I know the financial crunch has hit us all hard, and the only reason I’m still playing is because my friend aruvqan made it possible and stipulated that my gift was only to used for WoW!
A change in mindset is required then, thank you for the advice. I am now cycling through my targets while questing in Howling Fjord, the good thing about being a Tankadin is that taking on many mobs at one time is most efficient when questing so a chance for plenty of practice.
Fortunately my guilds best Tankadin was on last night so I had a chat with him. I’m going to leave tanking the Wrath dungeons until level 75 when I’ll get my last Tanking spell, Shield of Righteousness, so I can use the 9696 rotation properly. He also recommended the following theme for the Tiny Plates addon Threat Plates which I have downloaded but not yet used in an instance, the basic idea is it modifies the nameplates based on threat. If you have threat the nameplate is green, yellow if you’re close to losing it and finally it goes red and grows if you have lost threat. Handy for catching those mobs you have lost to an over-enthusiastic DPS.
Grats.
One question regarding championing using Tabards. The tooltip for the Wyrmrest Accord tabard says the following:
“Equip: You champion the cause of the Wyrmrest Accord. All reputation gains while in level 80 dungeons will be applied to your standing with them.”
What exactly are the level 80 dungeons? The Dungeon Finder for example lists Nexus as level 71-80 does that count? Do I have to be 80?
No, it’s a bit more complicated than that - there’s a table on this page. Basically it’s any heroic, plus in normal mode Halls of Lightning, Culling of Stratholme, Oculus, Trial of the Champion, and Utgarde Pinnacle. So if you happen to be in one of those normals before 80, you can get rep that way pre-80.
Random WTF moment of a PUG last night: We get into H CoS, go through the whole event to start off the dungeon, and then the mage says, “gotta take a shit, start without me.” Uh, yeah, we don’t have a choice since it’s a timed dungeon with running (timed) spawns and such. He put me on auto-follow. I was playing my druid in moonkin form, and he says, “Thanks, moon” when he returns, which was about a spawn before the first boss spawn. I was going to encourage him to eat more fiber.
The description is misleading. It just means “any Northrend instance”. As long as you’re wearing the tabard, you’ll get faction rep, regardless of your level.
As Ferret said, it’s any Heroic Northrend instance, or the hardest few on regular (the ones he lists).
The Burning Dog Legion ran both wings of Stratholme last night without too much difficulty. We did have a problem at one point when the Baroness MC’d our healer, but fortunately he was soulstoned so we were able to recover quickly. I picked up a few new pieces of gear (most happily, a new shield), which will probably all be replaced almost immediately since next week I think we will move on to BC content (Ramparts). I’m looking forward to that because we will finally be going back into dungeons I’ve done before, if only quite a while ago.
I still need a couple of classic dungeons for the Classic Dungeonmaster achievement - WC, Stockades, and LBRS. I can solo the first two sometime but I’ll have to pick up the other later.
No, no, it doesn’t apply to you. For Heroics, T9.0 is great. 3.5k DPS is good–and much more than you need for any Heroic, even the ICC 5-mans. The problem is when someone thinks *that *makes them an omg super 1337 asshole entitled to tell anyone and everyone else off.
When I’m on my Mage and I see someone else getting bitchy at the tank, I like to take the opportunity to point out that we need the tank a lot more than we need them, so they should shut up before we kick them from the party to prevent the tank from dropping. At that point, they either (a) clam up, and everyone’s happy, or (b) drop group, we replace them in 0.5 seconds, and again, everyone’s happy.
Welcome to WoW, the game written by thirteen year old boys. Trust me: you will never ceased to be amazed at the number of quests that involve feces in some way.
Sorry, taco, but that’s 100% wrong with regard to normal dungeons. Unless they’ve changed the mechanic since the release of Wrath (which AFAIK they haven’t), you will get **no **tabard faction rep for the lower-level Wrath dungeons. As Ferret Herder stated, the only dungeons where you get tabard rep in *normal *mode are HoL, UP, CoS, Oc, ToC, and the ICC 5-mans.
ETA: You’re correct, however, in stating that the level of the person wearing the tabard isn’t a factor. It’s just the level of the instance. However, lower-level characters won’t be able to zone into the higher-level dungeons, and you won’t be able to get into Heroics (which guarantee tabard rep, and in larger amounts than on regular) until you’re 80.
