Tanking Panzerkins, a Guide, a Movie, and Thoughts on the Death Knight

I'm still RL fishing as far as WoW's concerned, but thought I'd put out this guide for tanking as a Moonkin. I don't think it's nearly as controversial to consider the moonkin as a tank for relatively major encounters as it used to be even a few months ago, as this WoW Insider post helps confirm. For fun, here's the movie.



The guide linked to, above, still doesn't give us the proverbial mathes for bear vs. panzerkin threat, which I still need to get around to doing, but let's just say that unscientifically, moonkin can step in there and keep the squishies from going dry. Of course, as all of us PUG junkies know, it's just as much knowing how to tank as having the gear, talent, etc. Man, how a good tank makes PUGging more fun -- though admittedly it's not as important as lucking into a good Priest. I'm going to pause for some silent reflection. Phew, good Priests are nice.

I'll put a hard-copy of the moonkin tank guide here just because the Blizzard forum posts, even some sticky ones, disappear every so often.

Totally randomly, I'll append that the Death Knight seemed to make a lot of sense until I figured out that it could be either Horde or Alliance. I'm not totally on top of the late breaking info on the next expansion, but initially I thought having a flood of new high level Horde characters on Proudmoore would help balance out the numbers in the battlegrounds a bit and shorten waits. I will say that I'm much more likely to put some serious time into a higher level alt than a brand-spanking new Blood Elf. They're fun, and I've leveled a draenei hunter a bit, but I still don't have anyone over 10 but my main. I'm more confident now that's all the Death Knight is: An attempt to get those of us who don't want more lowbie alts but would pour in a few more months' of gameplay if the alt was as interesting as our main.

Now even after saying that a high-level alt would be attractive, note that the Death Knight seems to be a hybrid that's a lot like the Panzerkin. This is a magic using class that can tank. The difference? Well, instead of inserting an extremely round peg (those moonkin are pretty healthy, ain't they?) into a very square hole, these guys get to toss mana and rage entirely for that rune jive. Probably a smart move. Maybe something similar can happen with 'kin down the road?

RL Fishin'

For what it's worth, I'm afraid I really have gone fishin' for a while, and 'net access will be spotty for the next week or so. Then back to bloggin.

Druid Forum, DPS, and Mana Efficiency

I've been taking more knocks on the head for using my "of Nature's Wrath" gear, this time over on the Blizzard forums. The general gist (from here and elsewhere) is that many balance druids go Insect Swarm + Starfire for their rotation to save mana and sustain their DPS. That makes sense, but it's also not what I'm trying to do.

Here's a quote from the above link.

The most common casting rotation is this: IS/SFx4
The highest DPS casting rotation is this: IS/MF/Wx6

Well, exactly. For DPS, you Wrath, and that's where Nature's Wrath gear comes in.

Here's what the question reduces down to for me:

Why all the bias for mana efficiency when you'll often, depending on instance, bring down trash mobs before that's an issue? IS + SF might be good boss material, but it makes you inefficient against trash.

My guess is that the only way +nature dmg gear hurts you is if you...

1. Run into nature resistant mobs.
2. Are forced to back-up heal mid-fight.
3. Have a fight that lasts longer than you have mana.

The first would stink, but I haven't seen much of this outside of Nagraand. The second happens. You can swap idol and weapon to help, but yes, if your party starts to go down around trash mobs, you're in trouble in more ways than just gear. The third happens, but usually the fight's under control by then.

For bosses, you *change gear* if you've got it, but I'd like to see the pre-instance reward gear that'll beat what we've got here.

I mean, seriously, I haven't quite put in the time to have Tiered gear like the examples from the forum post I linked in the first paragraph: Madrox, Caliane, Skeldi, and Horao. Of course I'd rather have that stuff!

Gone Fishin'

Woohoo! CHECK OUT THEM THAR THIRTAH-SEVEN POUND REDGILL BOAH!!!! DAGGUM, THAT'S GOOOOOOD EATIN'!

I've been neglecting my cooking skills, and it's about the time I started getting buffs to go with my health breaks, so I got back on the cooking horse. I'd run the cooking quest two days ago, and now I'm back to fishing myself up some mats.

For a druid, fishing/cooking at level 225 or so is pretty easy. I ran over to Kelsy Yance in Booty Bay for the hot smoked bass recipe, as well as the filet of redgill. The second can be easily fished up in spades in Moonglade, which is a quick telelport away for us nature lovers, and the first can be found down in Tanaris, where I also made my way to Gikkix at Steamwheedle Port and grabbed two recipes: nightfin soup, which gives you, even at this low a level of cooking, a nontrivial buff of 8 mana/5 seconds -- for 10 minutes! -- as well as poached sunscale salmon, which has another great, 10 min buff of 6 health per 5 seconds. Nothing earthshaking, but better than a kick in the face, even at 70. Both of those have pretty good drops from Lake Elune'ara in Moonglade as well. Steamweedle gives out a good deal of spotted yellowtails, and Gikkix has a recipe for those, too.

The toughest part was probably finding the General Goods vendor in Moonglade, who is in the "far inn". Minimap included.

(Yes, I realize this is a horribly titled post.)

Jal's Current Gear

I've started up my fairly methodical blog post comparing "of Nature's Wrath" gear to Nodrassil Regalia with respect to their ability to dish out burst damage. One thing I've learned that, of the flavors of armor that I have currently (Expedition, Clefthoof, Murkblood), the Expedition set pieces have the best "of Nature's Wrath" bonuses. Too bad I can't go in and buy the whole set.

In any event, though I'll be comparing Expedition pieces in the mathes-off, I did first compile what Jal is wearing now, with its bonuses, etc. Here's what he's got.

Slot	Item	Armor	+DMG	+crit	+hit	+md5
Head	Clefthoof Cover of Nature's Wrath	203	71 nat
Neck	Brooch of Heightened Potential		22	14	9
Shoulder	Clefthoof Shoulderguards of Nature's Wrath	188	54 nat
Back	Ogre Slayer's Cover (+18 Int, +11 Spr)	68	20	16
Chest	Windroc Shroud (squishie cloth)	130	26	21
Arm	Murkblood Bracers of Nature's Wrath	115	42 nat
Hands	Expedition Gloves of Nature's Wrath	169	58 nat
Waist	Murkblood Belt of Nature's Wrath	148	57 nat
Legs	Murkblood Pants of Nature's Wrath	231	75 nat
Feet	Dreghood Boots of Nature's Wrath	147	44 nat
Ring 1	Sedai's Ring (+12 int)		15			5
Ring 2	Wildlord's Band		25	11
Trinket 1	Glowing Crystal Insignia		26/104
Trinket 2	Vengeance of the Illidari		0/120	26
Weapon	Talbuk Sticker (+15 sta, +11 int)		58	10
Off-hand	Slavehandler Rod of Nature's Wrath		34 nat
Idol	Idol of Ferocity (worthless for balance)
	Nordrassil Comparision Totals:	921	284 nat
	Grand Totals:	1399 (without kits)	192 627 nat 747 temp	98	9	5

Naturally there's not much past pure Nature damage. I can see why this would make Mera cry, but I can also see why, with roots or a good tank, this is some great stuff. It's a free crit every time I throw Wrath, and Wrath is powerful enough now that I lead with it instead of Starfire. Interesting to think there's still some room in the Nature's Wrath for improvement, as I could upgrade it all to Expedition, if those ever hit the AH.

Only real downside? Well, I do run out of mana occasionally, the armor isn't great (better than a Clothkin's, but not great), and it's not very flexible. If I need to emergency heal, I swap in my healing staff, but it's still pretty shoddy if I don't have time to change clothes. If I bump into the ever more common nature resistant mob, the DPS goes waaaaay down as I Starfire and Moonfire them to death (though I did just pick up an "of Arcane Wrath" cape questing last night *sigh*).

We'll see how the numbers cut out later, but thought this might be interesting, and following Jal's gear is something I'd been meaning to do more often.

Ding! 70

Farming motes of mana and guess what happens... Woohoo. Bout time. Now it's time to move from getting XP to getting gear and keys.

EDIT: Meant to add that /played is 25 days, 12 hours, and a few minutes. Not sure where that ranks me on the all time quest for 70, but it seems a little high. ;^) All those danged solo attempts of places I shouldn't have even been visiting, I guess.

And there's fragment #2

Last night, the guild leader and I did a stealth run to grab the second key fragment on the way to Kara attunement (horrible picture included, below). Though Amanna says this is pretty easy to do solo in his guide, his notes of when he tried make things sound a little more complicated.

Now here’s where the real strategy comes in. I hate to admit it, but I died about 5 times trying to kill the Guardian to get the key.

Well, we died about 3 times trying to get past the mobs at the start. Amanna and other guides say to bypass the first two guards and time your run through the patrolling mobs that come afterwards on the left. We eventually, after a few aborted attempts to sneak past the stealth-detecting bog lords on the right (aborted as in, "Bog Lord hits you for 3000"), waxed the first two Coilfang Warriors at the entrance (only one death trying, though if you're smart that won't happen -- sap one, then lure the second up to the instance entrance, run and heal outside the entrance once you're done, duh), and then took out one of the wandering patrols to make timing things easier. The Steamvaults is a horribly busy instance, at least at the beginning, and some good [computer] hardware would really come in handy.

After that, grabbing the fragment was pretty easy. I made the same mistake as Amanna, going full-balance moonkin, thinking the damage would bring it down easily. I ended up having to down a Super Healing pot. To continue an already hazy evening, I forgot to bring out my trees too, for some strange reason.

I also hadn't checked his notes before the run where he suggests to bring the Guardian to the surface, and the guild leader started drowning at the end -- but didn't die even though I cast Regrowth on myself twice instead of him. Nice spaz, Jal. Bring breathing potions/cherries. But things worked out, and, aside from the Bog Lord corpse runs, we got the fragment in no time at all. Much easier than managing a PUG, and it's always fun to spend some time with guildies.