Svenn's Survival Guide to Alt Tanking

Svenn has been doing a fair bit of tanking on Gundther as of late. As a new "under-geared" tank, he has experienced tanking challenges Svenn never faced tanking back when Heroics were "hard". Here are a few of the observations garnered from his recent trials:

1. You are NOT on your main! Slow down, chain pulling is fine if your healer can keep up, but no amount of healing awesomeness will be able to save you if you have the entire instance beating on you at once (especially when the 6k gear-score mage has more health than you).

2. Don’t sweat the aggro. The same 6k gear-score mage that has more health than you, will also be able to pull threat off you at will. Well, maybe not at will, but certainly if he/she is doing massive AoE damage or hitting mobs at the same time you just hit charge. Now, if toons the same gear level as you are ripping threat or your healer is a favorite target for mobs, you may need to reevaluate your tanking.

3. Ninja happens. DPS (I’m looking at you DKs!) will roll on “your” tanking drops. Work it out if you can, vote kick if you feel that strongly about it, but don’t sweat it or let it discourage you too much. At the end of the day, you will get 2-3 times the runs per hour than some ninja DPS guy. More runs = more badges =better gear anyways.

4. When in doubt whip it out, kill order that is. If you are having troubles with AoE, marking a kill order can go a long way to keeping mobs attached to you. If the DPS is insistent on hitting everything around at least you will have the peace of mind that you tried and they just can’t follow instructions well. Which leads me to my next point…

5. Grab it back! If you lose a mob, taunt it back. Trying to teach DPS a lesson about ignoring kill orders is futile. Chances are they can kill the mob before it kills them, the healer won’t let them die anyways, and it will just starve you of rage/procs/mana/etc.- thus reinforcing their poor performance. Make an assist macro to quickly switch targets (invaluable with melee DPS who will start getting smacked as soon as they pull aggro and are often difficult to distinguish in a crowd). This may seem counter-intuitive, but it will save you headaches in the long run while making your run smoother.

6. You lead the charge so lead! To make it clear, Svenn is not advocating for the “gogogo” crowd- they can all go die in a fire. Rather, while there may be others in your group that feel they know better, the burden will most likely fall on your shoulders so you may as well take charge. Good tanking takes confidence; you pick the pulls, you decide the kill orders, you set the pace. If you cede that control early, you wind up just being the designated meat shield along for the ride and won't be able to establish a good flow, protect your healer’s time to drink between pulls, plan for achievements should you choose to go that route, etc.

In the end, as with all PuGs, patience is the order of the day. Take solace in the fact that you are taking the hard road, tanking for tanking gear as opposed to DPSing until your tank set is stacked. Take each PuG as a learning experience, enjoy the good groups, learn from the bad, and strive to emulate the great. Every DPS in the queue appreciates your decision to tank, whether they act like it or not!

Speeeeed Runnn!!!

Svenn has talked previously about speed tanking Heroics, so its no surprise that he was involved in yet another speedy feat. What is a surprise, is that he was healing on Knutsen when it occurred.

I zoned into UK, was greeted by a /p "hello tree, buff enroute". The tank then commenced to pull. I thought to myself, "oh great, another go-go-go PuG", but decided to grin and bear it- confident I could heal through just about anything in the cakewalk that is UK.

Seven minutes later it was all over. /p "thanks tree, dropping". 7 Minutes!

Turns out (as I gleaned info on quick mouseovers of the party while running frantically to keep up), the other 4 were all from the same server/guild and all had gear scores in the 5.3-5.4k range. They moved with the precision of a Swiss watch, and I was grateful I got to come along for the ride.

I'm sure there is some disbelief out there, I could hardly believe it myself and I was there. For those skeptics, I have taken the liberty of unpacking some of the art and the science involved in the run. Also, there's a screenie!

The Art:
The tank (warrior) took the most efficient route through the instance. Every pull was clean, unbroken, and flowed naturally into the next one. The initial pull cleared the whole entrance way, and the stragglers followed the tank into the main forge area where the next two groups were dropped in quick succession- forcing down the flame walls. The "stables" area was done with 2 pulls (which again flowed smoothly together), with the tank threading a perfect line down the center of the room, leaving both sides alone and unaggroed.

The next two groups were pulled together into the room with the boss, which was picked up as the AoE was downing the last of the mobs from the previous 2 pulls- he was down in 22seconds. The next hallway was pulled all the way to the stairs where, once down, engineering rocketboots, etc. were activated (glad I remembered to switch to cat and activate dash). Groups I didn't think possible to be skipped were bypassed along the second set of steps (I prowled for fear of accidental aggro, probably the only time I was out of combat the entire run).

The second boss was down before I could blink, and the remaining groups were pulled into Ingvar, who took the longest to kill due to the set piece during his tradition to his undead state. All in all, the run was as much a thing of beauty as any run lasting only 7 minutes can be.

The Science:
Still disbelieving what happened, I went back and did some research, here is what I came up with...Warning: this involves Math!

DPS 1 -5317 DPS
DPS 2 -4996 DPS
DPS 3 -4015 DPS
Tank - 1957 DPS
Healer -4 DPS
Total: 16289 damage per second (average)

7 minutes = 420 seconds. @16289 DPS = 6841380 total damage done.

The 6.8 million figure assumes that all DPS were always in combat (total damage done would have been more useful data, but alas I didn't screenshot that), total out of combat time was probably about 20seconds over the course of the 7 minute run ~4% of the time, so that total damage done number drops to somewhere around 6567725.

Having no way to calculate the exact amount of health for each mob engaged (at least in any practical way while flying through the instance) I calculated the bosses Hps as guideline to see how much of the total damage would be left for the mobs.

Prince Keleseth, 403200 Hp
Skarvald/Dalronn combined, 417056 Hp
Ingvar both phases, 247627 Hp
for a grand total of 1315510 Health Points.

This leaves a little over 5.25 million damage left for the trash....that's a lot of trash!


And there you have it, the 7 minute UK run....oh, and the screenie I promised too, notice the buff up-time (upper left), and that's after looting, teleporting out, and chatting about the run in guild chat for a bit too :)*

To kick or not to kick?

Rather than waste everybody’s time the past few days with filler content (read: I am about out of ideas), Svenn decided to pool his creative efforts into one post- the results of which are hopefully a more cogent discussion.

There has been a lot of buzz about DPS performance in PuGs formed with the LFD tool. Gelvon over at The Greedy Goblin advocates for prompt dismissal of poor performers, Rohan of Blessing of Kings leans towards the "tolerate and finish approach", and even Larisa of The Pink Pigtail Inn- the paragon of cheer and joy in the blogosphere, has weighed in on her personal use of the Vote Kick option (albeit in respects to tanks and healers not DPS). These posts are just a small representation of the material out there concerned with this topic.

Svenn too has encountered his fair share of “sub-optimal” players in both LFD and premade groups, and has always come out the run with the emblems he expected coming in. So what’s all the fuss about? Near as I can tell, separating fact from opinion, there are several conclusions that can be reached:

As heroics are repeated ad-nausea, minute per emblem (MpE) becomes increasingly important. When the instance was new and fresh people were more tolerant of longer runs, as long as they were successful. With the sparkle of newness long since faded, heroics are just another grind- best gotten done and over with as quickly as possible.

Gear < Skill is an unpopular argument. While that does not change the underlying truth of the statement, acceptance of the argument all too often will implicate yourself or your behaviors as part of the problem and as such is better left unexamined. (Gear is not a limiting factor if you already have skill, so why try and grind badges to get more? If you don’t have skill, gear will enable you to get farther, but still won’t address the underlying condition of lack of skill. Etc.)

Vote kicking is Mean >:(, that is to say it is viewed negatively by most. Right, wrong, or indifferent-people hesitate to “pull the trigger” unless the situation is incredibly dire. If you vote kick for low DPS output, you set a standard. By setting this standard, you now obligate yourself to the standard (more work for you) and; you have no guarantee that the next replacement will be any better than the person you just vote kicked.

The outcome of this then becomes one of personal values. If you are invested in ridding WoW, or at least your Heroic run of crappy DPS then- Vote Kick away. If you want to get your Heroic, get your badges, and get out then- Vote Kick only when necessary. If you want to argue that Gear is less of a factor than it is made out to be- come talk to Svenn or a wall, because no one else is likely to listen (and I already have the gear so I probably don’t count).

Stood Up!

WARNING: Rant follows...

The other night Svenn pugged Heroic ToC and got bailed on! It was a partial pug to help out a guildie, Sala with his very new level 80 priest. He knew going into it that the Sala was not going to put up fantastic numbers as it was the first heroic run for the toon. Not an issue as Inno the super rogue agreed to come along and pick up the DPS slack (at over 3k DPS he can too!). Svenn knew the healer from somewhere so no worries there, all that was left was to grab a 3rd DPS. A warrior was quickly found to fill in and the group headed in.

After a quick run through on normal, Svenn reset the instance to Heroic and the group headed back in. The first fight was a bit rougher than usual but no real issues, and victory was achieved sans wipe. The luck of the draw was against us and boss number two was the Argent Confessor Paletress. Again, a bit shaky, but again the kill was achieved without a wipe. With only the Black Knight left, Svenn felt pretty confident that he had lucked into a good pug and that Sala was going to have a decent shot at some good loot. Phase 1 and 2 of the BK went smoothly, then quite suddenly it was all over- a wipe on Phase 3.

Svenn was not really sure why they wiped on Phase 3, but was pretty confident the second time would be the charm. Alas, that was a question not to be answered as the Warrior abruptly dropped group and logged. No explanation, no apologies, no nothing! "Coward!" were the derisive cries in /party, but was he? Considering that he was behind the tank in DPS/damage done, and no where near Inno in whatever metric you choose, Svenn thinks he was pretty bold. To quit a group which carried a him on the backs of a heroic effort by one DPS a Healer and a Tank, after only one attempt that fell just short- is nothing short of classy. So, thanks buddy for reminding Svenn yet again why he doesn't pug, even if it's just one slot.

/END RANT

To be fair, the Warriors DPS wasn't all that bad at 2k but, it takes more than that to stay ahead of Svenn anymore...a real winner none-the-less.

Speed Tanking

It has been awhile since Svenn dug into some real tanking issues. Since the patch he has seen a gradual return to action, mostly in the "speed tank" department. It is all about the badges and so he has been helping farm heroics while FIST takes a break from raiding. The group he runs with consistently has great heals (ty Shadow:)), and usually 1 solid DPS and a couple under-geared Alts.


Outside of the Daily Heroic, we usually try to hit CoT4 (best Badge per minute yield at 5 badges in ~20mins), and one other Heroic. For CoT4 Svenn needs to keep the pace up to make the timer for the optional mount boss, while everyone has the mount by now, he still drops a badge and so is a must from an efficiency standpoint. For the other Heroics, Svenn keeps the speed up for other reasons; primarily because we have done these instance Sooo many times (still fun though), and also because the time spent in them may make the difference between tacking a quick VH run on the end of the night for 3 more badges or prolonging the "badge grind" another couple days.


That being said, Svenn has focused his tanking priorities along different lines than his raid priorities.


Total Health: For Heroics anything over 30k is overkill, therefore Svenn doesn't use any elixirs/flasks to boost his sta. He does still use Blessing of Sanctuary with the 10% stamina increase. While you could use Blessing of Might to further boost AP, as a pally tank, you really can't overlook the mana return from BoS, so Svenn will continue to self buff Sanctuary.


Total Armor: Armor as a mitigation stat is not all that impressive, so Svenn tanks heroics with Retribution Aura up (though he may switch to Devotion Aura on single target boss fights- it really depends on how much he wants to make Shadow sweat).

Total DPS: Svenn has switched out of some of his "better" tanking gear to ensure he is hit capped. Getting hit capped is the first step to more DPS, the second step is a bit trickier. Unlike normal melee DPS, the tank by definition stands in front of the mob, and thus suffers the full chance to be blocked/dodged/parried- all of which results in a loss of DPS. In order to mitigate this, Svenn has stacked Expertise where feasible. By no means is he expertise capped, and indeed you shouldn't go out of your way to get there, but every little bit helps. Furthermore, Svenn makes use of the Flask of Endless Rage or the less spendy Wrath Elixer to boost his AP/DPS. Additionally, the Glyph of Sense undead comes in handy in a place like CoT4.

Svenn is averaging 2k DPS as the tank with this setup, which is about right I think.

Gear/Buff selections aside, the other, and arguably more important part of speed tanking, is tempo. As the tank, you set the pace. These days, running a healer out of mana is a tough chore, one which you should undertake in speed tanking. The idea is to pull smoothly but continuously until you come to a boss or until somebody calls uncle. While this may seem reckless, remember, you are well past the requirements necessary for the encounters and time is of the essence.

That being said, when pulling, the bigger the better. Obviously you want to keep the pulls manageable, but if you can safely pull a group of 3-4 mobs plus the 2-3mob pat, go for it. Most AoE DPS are based on given area (Consecration) not a number of mobs in an area (Hammer of the Righteous), thus if you are going to be doing the damage to an area, may as well try and fill that area with mobs, rather than just empty floor space. If you are short on AoE DPS this is still the way to go, as you can keep the AoE up with Consecration and minimize the amount of repositioning DPS would otherwise need to do when running to the next pull.

Judge Wisdom! As a pally tank your mana pool is necessarily low ~6k, and you will be pulling continuously for effieciency sake. Even with the mana return from blocks (BoS) and Spiritual Attunement, you will consistently be low on mana. Judgeing Wisdom is key to keeping up the mana while spamming high cost abilities like Consecration. It should go without saying that your divine plea should always be on cooldown as well.

Don't freak out! If your healer is sitting down to take a drink between pulls, no prob. Top yourself off, its OK you're a pally- you can heal, and keep going. There are few pulls in any heroic that you can't tank for a few seconds on your own while your healer catches a breather. If it doesn't look like you are going to get that heal in time, use Lay on Hands or better yet, bubble and sick all those meanies on him- that will teach 'em to sleep on the job!

So, speed tanking- a great way to get badges fast. Using these steps, Svenn tanked through Nexus in ~30mins with a less than stellar DPS makeup. All in all, its about your confidence as the tank: make the pulls fast, clean, and continuous, push the pace, and provide your own DPS in as much as it is possible. You will find that speed tanking can make heroics fun again, so enjoy.

You ol' Crommunist

Last night Cromm got in some quality Heroics runs. Shadowbreeze healed, Saiff tanked on his DK (normally I am not a big fan of DK tanks, but you take what you can get and he did a fantastic job of it), and Emma and Hanka filled out the DPS.

We blew through VH which netted Cromm his first Emblem of Heroism as well as Cyanigosa's Leggings, and headed over to Utgarde Keep to knock out the daily. Again, it was a fast smooth run. Cromm nabbed the Wand of the San'layn, bringing him closer to the hit cap and getting into Naxx runs and beyond. He finished up the night at just under 2k DPS, not bad for never having been in a heroic and just having respecced to destro-fire lock (Cromm was destro for awhile in BC so he is not a complete noob at it).

There was some good discussion about the future of Ulduar raiding, while waiting for cooldowns before the last boss. With both Raid Tanks, the Raid Leader/ Main Healer, and our top DPSer in the group we had much to talk about. While the meat of the discussion warrants a separate post, I will say that there is some work to be done before there can be real progression past FL.

Merrily Melting Faces

This week FIST has pressed the pause button on raiding due to the Midsummer Holiday event. This has been good; Svenn, as well as the rest of the raiders I'm sure, needed a break. So while Svenn has gone into hibernation, emerging only to do a few choice dailies, Ottar has stepped onto the main stage.

Playing Ottar has been a nice change to tanking. While he is dual specced, I made the decision to gear him first as DPS, picking up healing gear when the opportunity presents itself. Melting faces has been a fun diversion from the frantic finger mashing of tanking. Ottar enjoys not having his health bar yo-yo up and down like a meth squirrel on a backyard trampoline. While his DPS still isn't great, this week off from raiding should help with that.

Last night, Ottar did an alt run with Cam (Qwen), Hanka (Grayce), and Janus (Saiff). Faeris was kind enough to come heal/ chaperon. He nailed down a spell rotation which, while not incredible for damage output, results in good up time on vampiric embrace and mana regen for the party with vampiric touch + mind blast. DPS output was a little over 1.4k; about right for were he is gear-wise. Hopefully that will go up significantly with the addition of the Azure Cloth Bindings, which obligingly dropped last night, as well as the Sash of the Wizened which Ottar can now get from last night's rep gains. The extra hit rating from the sash should bring Ottar close enough to the hit cap that he can gem the rest and start in on Naxx runs (when Svenn isn't needed for tanking of course).

Off Night Activities

Saturday night Svenn tried out his new healing spec in Heroic UK. It quickly became apparent that he needed much more practice healing, as well as some better gear (mostly to compensate for being a rookie healer). Bluechicken tanked the run, and Hanka (Grayce's hunter), Emma, and Raenbow DPSed.

The run itself went fairly quickly, but I often got behind on healing and wound up letting someone die before the end of each fight (sorry Raen). We had one wipe on the second boss and several other random deaths on trash leading up to the final boss. That was enough to convince me that I was not ready yet (the few epics Svenn had picked up from Naxx and the Firestrider Chestguard from Ulduar were not enough to make up for the crummy blue quest rewards that made up the bulk of his gear). Raen turned tree for the last boss and helped out with the healing; we were able to finish the run without incident.

To help close the equipment gap Svenn cranked out some Argent Crusade dailies and hit exalted with the faction. This allowed him to purchase the Helm of Purified Thoughts and the Signet of Hopeful Light. Once again Grayce was kind enough to let Svenn avail himself of her jewel crafting skills to fill the open slots on the helm as well as some other healing gear which had been sitting empty. Combined with inscriptions, spell thread, and some enchant vellums from Ottar, Svenn is far more prepared for his next holy outing, and far poorer too.

More Misadventures in VH

Last night saw Svenn tanking Heroic Violet Hold once again. This run however, was a bit different. The group filled quickly enough (after all, it wasn't a raid night); Corday brought her Rogue (Emmapeel), Innoonfire (Blue Chicken), and Saiff filled out the DPS cadre, but there was nary a healer in sight.

Enter Yallenna, Grayce's Holy Pally. Grayce had never healed heroic on Yallenna, in fact had never been in a Northrend instance at all with her. She had leveled her to 80 with the intention of healing with her, but had put her on the shelf in favor of the freeze your face off DPS of Grayce. She had decent gear; craftable epics and blues mainly, as well as some enchants and jems, so she was within the 1.5k recommended spell power range for heroics. As Yallenna frantically set up her Healbot while the group assembled, Svenn and other guildies assured her she would be fine. She was more than fine, she was exceptional.

The fast paced nature of VH was a bit of a challenge for her mana regen, but there was plenty of mage food, and the steady DPS output ensured that there was time to enjoy it between portal openings. The whole run went very smoothly, and no one went down until the very end with Cyanigosa's fate already sealed.

Her heals were spot on, her timing great, and the extra set of pally buffs were a nice addition to the stack. It was enjoyable to be running something with her again (Cromm had leveled to 70 with Yallenna, pre-Wrath). I think Svenn found his pocket healer at last - and she disenchants to boot!

At Last

As you are probably well aware, Svenn has delusions of grandeur from time to time. Previously, those delusions have been held in check by the absence of one critical piece of gear: Essence of Gossamer. This tasty trinket is by far the best tanking trinket pre-Naxx and arguably beyond. The stamina on it is immense, and the random shield proc is nice as well, making it sought after by PvPers as well as PvE tanks.

The trinket drops off the second boss in Azjol-Nerub in Heroic mode. Svenn had been farming it on and off for two months (a little bit of that place goes a long way), with little success. Hadronox gave it up once on the second or third kill but Svenn, as is his wont, rolled a particularly crummy 7 or so, and was beat out by a warrior who was "planning on switching to prot in the near future". (That was a PUG run.) This event so demoralized Svenn that he said goodbye to AN for about a week, before the siren song of the Trinket called him back.
Wiser now, Svenn gathered a loyal cadre of Guildies around him to avoid the near soul crushing experience of being out rolled should the trinket ever decide to drop again. Hadronox, sensing something was amiss, promptly clammed up and dropped everything except the trinket on nine straight kills. Disheartened by the utter failure of the desired loot to make another appearance, he gave up on the trinket and moved to greener pastures.

Yesterday, riding the euphoria of several successful nights in Naxx, I decided to give AN one more shot. With most of the usual suspects in tow, I headed back in for one more try, Lucky 13. We struggled through Krik'Thir and on to Hadronox, that malicious spider that was bent on denying Svenn what should rightfully be his. Time or Fate or just dumb luck intervened and the trinket finally fell to the floor, rolling to a stop in front of Svenn's eager and outstretched fingers. We ventured further in to kill off the last boss and bid the place adieu, hopefully for the last time.

Svenn would like to extend a special thanks to a few folks from FIST who put up with his incessant nagging for yet another Heroic AN run. In no particular order they are:

The lovely Grayce, whose untiring DPS saved the day more than once.

Hamm with his cleansing totems, I have no idea why he kept coming back time and again.

Jazzmynn, a cheerful volunteer on many of the runs.

Qwen, who filled various roles on various toons for various attempts.

Rew and Mandan who filled in as DPS on the 13th and final run.

Shop Smart, Shop S-Mart

Last night saw Svenn heading into Utgarde Pinacle in order to help fellow guild members Ginn (Hunter) and Fey (Boomkin) get the Children's Week Achievement [Hail to the King, Baby!] Accompanied by Shadowbreeze on heals and S's Warlock we headed in dreading the "Gauntlet", but otherwise fairly confident. I started the run at about 1.5k DPS, not to shabby for a tank. Svenn loves beating on the undead, and every pull was AoE and no CC was necessary as all of us but S have been running Naxx pretty regularly.

Things went pretty smoothly and we crushed through the gauntlet with only S dieing, which was probably my fault since I was explaining the fights to him as we went (he had never been there before) and I failed to mention the whirlwind attack once we get the Boss off his mount. Anyways, I think the whole thing could have been done even easier if I had gone straight to the end and tanked all the Adds as they came out of the door.

I fell off in DPS towards the end, down to about 1.3K. I'm not sure why, I think the gauntlet hurt my overall damage production. With Mobs running everywhere, and constant repositioning required due to the frost breath it was hard to keep up on the DPS. Also, the amount of taunts Svenn threw to try and keep everyone rounded up and focused on him messed up the spell rotation somewhat and the bonus damage from Libram of Obstruction/Shield of Righteousness wasn't happening as often.

The rest of the pulls to the King were easy trash, fear wasn't a problem with Shadow's Fear Ward and Svenn's Every Man for Himself. We had a semi-deliberate wipe on the King; Fey went down, as you can only get the achievement if you are alive and that was the main reason we were in there, we all went down to get her a second shot without having to wait for the Heroic to reset.

There were no issues the second time around and everyone got their achievements and Svenn finally got to replace the Infantry Assault Blade with the Red Sword of Courage. Even though the upgrade isn't tremendous, I have wanted it for awhile and it looks badical!

Hit Rating: Hero or Zero?

I took Haager (the DK) through Utgarde Keep last night with the guild. Jazzmynn needed the Shammy helm that drops (or doesn't) off the first boss. We have been farming UK pretty hard for her and it just wasn't dropping so back we went. As I had tanked it on Svenn the previous 2 runs, I really didn't want to do it again, but was able to talk Hamm into bringing his Druid to tank so I could fill out the group with the DK and still get Jazz the run. Qwen healed and Arklonn filled the other DPS slot.

Things I learned: Hit rating is really important. I entered with all blues (mostly craftable Savage Saronite stuff). With my AP at around 2.4k and my crit sitting at 32% percent or so I figured I would be able to dish out my share of the dps. I was wrong. I struggled the whole run to stay ahead of the tank and ended up at about 1.1-1.2k DPS overall, the reason; my Hit rating was at 120 or ~4%. This meant a lot of misses and unrealized DPS.

I also had some problems with positioning, as Svenn is used to standing in front of the mobs and taking a beating. I was slow getting into range and overall managed the cool down on my runes pretty poorly. I kept the Tank focused so I could target his target and that helped me from pulling aggro, not that my pathetic dps could have anyway.

All that being said, the run went smoothly and I picked up some nice pants, complete with hit rating and some gem slots for additional hit.