On PVE Twinking, Thick Skin and Kid Gloves

The new Dungeon Finder has literally revolutionized the game. Why race to the endgame and wait in line to raid tank? Tanking is fun, that's the bottom line. It used to be that you raced to the endgame in order to increase your chances of finding other players who were on your server and looking for a group. For example, getting a group together to take on Sunken Temple was notoriously difficult when I was leveling my first five or six characters to 80 on The Venture Co. Getting parties together for Lower Blackrock Spire was just impossible, and entirely out of the question. I never even saw the inside of these dungeons until much later on, when I was leading tours for my alts with my main, and at the time I was overwhelmed with a sadness that these dungeons would never get played honestly again, at least not on my server.

All that is over. With the ability to find dungeon groups, and especially the ability to slow down one's experience and level progression, the option to savor these old instances is absolutely back on the table. Players like me, who are "new" to the game, having come in in the latter half of the Burning Crusade expansion, can get a taste of how the game used to be, and it has really broadened my ability to have fun with and appreciate the old instance content.

Blizzard has hit a silent grand slam on this matter. I don't see people talking about PvE Twinking, but I'm here to say it's a renaissance for the game.

Gushing aside, in the first bracket of instances (I don't count RFC--there's not really enough gear in there for it to be considered anything but a trailer to the dungeon game) you're very likely to run into players who have never run an instance before. It's especially sad, given the funny and well written article today at wow.com about how Death Nuggets are the new Huntards, that for truly new players, the Hunter class is still a strong and popular choice, and despite the potential of the class, its subtler aspects do not lend themselves well to novice play in dungeon instances.

By the time they hit level 19, a rogue is either learning how to play their class, or they're getting killed with every pull, and this while leveling. Same goes of a warrior, shaman, all of the classes really. The pet-as-protector does so much to insulate the hunter from harm, that the class stands out in instance play when that dynamic changes.

And, yes, I am specifically talking about novice hunters who leave their pets on aggressive mode, leave growl turned on, can't manage their mana, and generally make a tank's job unreasonably challenging. Not because they're bad or not worthy of playing in dungeons with the rest of us, not at all. Maybe they just spend too much time in the woods and need to learn a bit of teamwork is all. I'm just sayin'.

I've had a couple of great experiences in the last two days in dungeons with solid hunters who knew exactly what they were doing and rained holy havoc on the damage meters. And they make up for the others, but they are rare. I cannot lie. When I see a hunter in the ranks I tend to expect the worst. But, as this is not a productive attitude, I've been trying to be proactive and helpful instead.

A few bad encounters have gotten me into the habit of starting out the event with a standard spiel. First I'll ask if this is anyone's first instance encounter, and if there is a hunter whether they have Growl turned off and passive mode turned on. I'll also look on the party roster to see who is the healer, and then ask who the healer is. Not to be insulting, but I've had Druid Healers who immediately took to Bear form and then ran out and started pulling, then barked at me over and over and OVER again for a res when their laughable 700 hit points were splattered all over the walls and floor.

You can get a general feel in the first couple minutes whether the party is going to be a wash or if it's something you can stick with. If the DPS characters just run out and start going wild, the healer is in there swinging their staff in the melee, or leaving to go back to town for "milk", your hit points are slooooowly creeping downward and never coming back up, and you're scratching your head wondering what cradle these kids just crawled out of, there's nothing wrong with wishing them all the best and move on to another instance for a while. This is the "thick skinned" part of the life. If your party wants to do the dungeon without a tank, it's their call.

You're a tank, after all. You're not going to have to wait for a new group.

On the other hand, if you've got an alert, good natured healer and the players seem to take well to your starting spiel, you might have the makings of a very fun evening. In general, if you're tanking well and you have a good healer, the two of you should be able to offer a lot in the way of coaching and guidance to the dealers. The damage meters will tell you who needs coaching and who doesn't. The hard part about this is not being a sarcastic, arrogant jerk about it, and also not being a patronizing, smug know-it-all. It's worse with the stress of the dungeon and the limitations of text. In these cases, whispering might help--you're not chewing them out in front of the others.

In all cases, chewing them out never helps. Assume positive intent, go in with the goal of being a resource for them, praise them for their successes, and protect them from their mistakes if you can.

Besides, walking a hunter through the process of setting their pet to passive and turning off Growl for the first time might just transform the game for them, and mark the beginning of a new awareness of the potentials of their class.

I don't know if I'll see as much of the new player mentality in higher level instances, but I'm growing to see putting on the kid gloves as just another element of tanking.

No matter how bad it seems, remember this--at least we don't have to deal with Death Nuggets in the early dungeons.

Mob Handling Notes from Wailing Caverns

When I was running Wailing Caverns last night I was forced to do a lot of fancy mob handling.  WC is chock full of casters, and they know not to come running when you slap them with a Faerie Fire.

One common method used to force the casters to actually come to you is to use a Line of Sight (LoS) tactic.  Since they can't cast at you if you're not in line of sight, you hit them with a Faerie Fire, then back around a corner and they'll come running over.

But using an LoS is not always in the cards.  Sometimes, as is frequently the case in Wailing Caverns, you have dangerous multi-caster pulls, where you have to keep multiple mobs on you that don't want to move.  If you're fortunate enough to have a patient and cunning party that will back up and let you use an LoS ambush, that's great.  But sometimes you just need to throw caution to the wind and get into the thick of things.

It's during these situations that effective aggression management is so important.  One of the things I always try to do is to use Faerie Fire (Feral) on as many targets as I can, and preferably early in the fight.  FFF actually generates threat, unlike Growl.  Having the Glyph of Maul is useful for building threat against a large number of opponents, if you take the time to frequently change targets to spread the love around a bit, but casters are very problematic because they don't line up in front of you the way you'd like them to, and you can't kite them around by walking backwards.

In 3.1, Swipe was changed to affect all mobs in a 360º area around you, a major improvement from Burning Crusade, in which its area of effect was a frontal cone.  This helps in the beginning of a fight, especially if you have spare rage from an earlier encounter.  However, it costs 15 rage with 5 ranks of Ferocity.  Unless you are literally surrounded by mobs, this is not a very good skill to use in terms of threat-to-rage ratios.  Compared to Maul, which costs 5 less rage and generates far more threat, Swipe becomes, at least at the early levels that we're talking about, an emergency button to be used only in special circumstances.  Not until much later on will it become a mainstay, front line workhorse of an ability.

So, barring the frequent use of Swipe to maintain aggression on multi-caster mobs with meat shields tossed in, and potentially adds or patrols, what I do is keep tabs on my threat meter.  If I have at least 3x as much threat as the next guy, even if I'm dealing with a caster, I just leave them and go to the next caster.  Try to get two mobs in front of you if you can, but focus on the casters because the melee mobs will follow along with you.  If you see a caster going after one of your party members, use FFF to suck them back into your threat well.  And if you really start to lose control in a heavy melee situation, because we're in the level 10-19 bracket here and don't have a cooldown to force every nearby mob to attack us, just punch Demoralizing Roar to at least hamstring the attack power of the nearby mobs.

Two more tips for Wailing Caverns.  First, armor doesn't mitigate magic, so building a massive effective health pool is the best defense against these sorts of encounters.  Eat your buff food.  Second, save your Bash for when the druids try to use their sleep spell--losing your healer or one of your dealers in a big fight could get you squished.

Tanked to the Teeth

Just a few more pieces now, and I can move on to new content.  I saw two of the remaining four pieces tonight in WC, but the party was heavy on leather wearers.  I decided not to "need" the Deep Fathom Ring, because the healer (who did a rock star job) needed it, and I can't wear it until level 20 anyway.

I can still upgrade to the Smelting Pants and Serpent's Shoulders without proceeding to level 20.  At that point, there'll be nothing I can improve on, in terms of tanking gear, for this batch of dungeons.  The biggest improvement, in terms of raw effective health, that I can get at level 20, will be the Black Wolf Bracers from Shadowfang Keep.  At that point, there'll be nothing from WC, SFK, or DM that I need for tanking, and I can change focus to leveling for a while.

I had a fantastic group for WC tonight, which made up for two false starts earlier in the evening.  Looking forward to cross-realm friend lists so I can keep in touch with some of these good healers.

Shout out to Reilynn on the Mannoroth realm.  Fast, clear headed, well geared healer, I never saw her mana bar go down all night.

Get To The Wheel!

Get to the choppa! wheel!

This was the cry of salvation last night when I was tanking the Deadmines and pulled an epic fail Brick Blunder, accidentally using Faerie Fire (Feral) on a mob at the top of the scaffolding / ramp on the gangway leading up to the final boss encounter.  I had meant to pull the mob directly in front of me but missed by two entire stories on the scaffolding.

The mob heap snowballed on the way down the ramp.  It was a Bad Thing™.

I think, by the time the entire group of mobs got down to me there were 10-15 of them, and my healer had the presence of mind to let me twist in the wind and bust their Disciplined chops up the ramp and onto the water wheel.  At the very least, I think I bought them some time to escape.

Once on that wheel, the mobs cannot attack you, as they lack ranged abilities.  If you wait long enough, they de-aggress and return to their leashed starting points.

After that, wipe recovery and we were back up and running.

I will likely go back to the Deadmines after a level or two and try those pulls again with my patented Flying Bear Maneuver.  I'll try to get some screenshots of those pulls as well.

PvE Twinking

Since the addition of the "XP Freeze" feature in WoW, players are able to do something we never could before--we can twink our characters for dungeon instance play.

Yesteryear you had to content yourself with whatever you were lucky enough to pull from a dungeon, or go through the excruciating process of grinding an instance with a high level "main" character while your "twink" stayed back far enough to not get any experience, then bring them in for the boss encounter so they could grab the loot at the end.  I did my share of both methods, and they were nowhere near as fun as this is.

With the ability to turn off my experience, I can now run dungeons with my PvE-twinked bear tank and get the blue items that I always wanted from dungeons that are my level.  Moreover, with the dungeon finder I can nearly always get a group together, and really can savor the experience.  At that level, you need to actually learn some of the pulls, and genuinely play the instance to the best of your extremely limited ability.

The experience is like riding a very well built and maintained fixed gear.  There are fewer moving parts, so you really need to learn to make the most of each of them.

I might really enjoy the option to preferentially join groups with gear scores similar to my own so that I don't get the odd healer with 500 mana on a trial account who insists on drinking ice cold milk at level 19.  Being in a group of other PvE-twinked characters who really knew their class and role might be a lot of fun.

Or, the ego-bleed might drive me insane.  But I'd give it a whirl.  In fact, this might mark a renaissance in WoW for me.  With this type of gameplay we could put together a guild for running some of the classic raiding instances.

I only have a couple more slots before I've gotten everything I could from this bracket of dungeons, and will likely move on after that.  But it's been a really fun way to get back into the swing of things, and I'm proud to say Brickflank is looking mighty tanky these days.

Powershifting

Powershifting is a technique that involves instantaneously changing form from one's current form to a different form and back.  For example, you would drop out of your Bear Form and immediately back into Bear Form.

There are two major reasons for powershifting.

First, changing forms breaks roots such as Entangling Roots and Frost Nova.  This is invaluable in a tanking setting as it allows you freedom of movement and the ability to move dangerous mobs away from your rooted teammates.

The second reason for powershifting, especially as a Bear, is that it "procs" or activates the benefit conferred by the talent "Furor" and instantly give you 10 rage if the tank is dry.  This, essentially, turns mana into rage.

I will only discuss powershifting from Bear Form into Bear Form, with Caster Form as the intermediate step.

There are two ways to powershift.  The first method is to manually press the button, either on your keyboard if it is mapped to a key or to a slot on your action bar, wait for your character to change forms back to caster form, and then press the button a second time in order to change back.  The second method is to press a button that activates a powershifting macro, which will instantly transform you from your current form into your current form, without visibly halting at the caster form stage.

I have not tested whether there are actually practical reasons to use the macro, in the form of taking damage while in caster form.  But, my intuition tells me that for that split second while I am in caster form, I am vulnerable in a way that is circumvented by the use of the powershifting macro.

The basic powershifting macro is simple:


/cast !Bear Form

Once you reach sufficient level you will need to switch this to Dire Bear Form, but the general principle is the same.  You put the commands to drop your current form, and to assume Bear Form on the stack.  They are executed in that order, in one action.  The effect of each happen at the same time, and you thus receive 10 rage.

If you are forced to shift form in order to escape a root during a dungeon encounter, this technique helps you prevent the complete loss of all of your rage in the bargain.  It also helps you prime the pump for the first several seconds of an encounter.

I've heard stories of people being roundly mocked during pick-up-group instance encounters for taking five points in Restoration talents so early in their leveling process.  I'll examine whether five points in Furor is worth the tradeoff for Feral talents in my next installation.

Attacking While Backstrafing

I use a Belkin n52te device when I play WoW.

I have all key strobing turned off, and the first four keys in each of three rows mapped to 1-4, 5-8, and 9-= respectively. I also have shift and control mapped to keys. Target next and target previous are mapped to the scroll wheel, and having everything well within reach saves me some wrist strain.

But it's the little thumb toggle that really helps me with backstrafing. In order to completely eliminate the possibility that I'd truly run from an enemy, and by doing so lose my dodge bonus, I decided to map the up, down, and back positions on the thumb toggle to "q", "e" and "s", respectively. The important thing to note about this is that I do not have "w" mapped on the Belkin, which means I can only reach full speed by strafing or using my mouse.

In order to turn or change direction, I use my mouse. To run forward I use the mouse. When the time comes to backstrafe, I take over on the Belkin, and use the mouse to control my direction. This has been good practice, and I'm finally starting to really get the hang of it after a couple of false starts. But it's not easy mode by any means. In order to get the benefits from this you have to keep a careful eye on whether or not, as you are strafing away, the enemy is running along in front of you or behind you.

Consider if you were facing away from a target. You could circle strafe it with your back facing it the entire time, if you wanted. But in order to always keep it in front of you you need to be facing the other direction. It's the same way with backstrafing. If you go off at the wrong angle the enemy will be behind you, and you won't be able to dodge or use your attacks. Fortunately the game gives an audible whenever you try to attack something that is behind you, so I advise that you keep Maul on cooldown when practicing your backstrafing.

By the time you get Bear form, you should be able to head back to Teldrassil or Mulgore and practice your professions while getting in some backstrafing practice. You can use your keyboard, or get all fancy with the peripherals if you prefer. But practice makes perfect. Once you've got it down you should be able to switch orientation so that you're traveling in the same direction but facing the opposite way. Any opponent that was just behind you is now "in front" of you again. You can still move away at a running pace, dodge and attack as normal.

With practice you should be able to switch back and forth effortlessly, always keeping your enemy "in front" of you as you backstrafe. Once you have that down, we can talk about ways to do this with some semblance of situational awareness, so you're not running blind.

On Bricks, Backstrafing, Talents and Professions for Baby Bears

After doing more work last night with backstrafing, I wanted to share a couple of my observations. But first, a note on the name "Brickflank". Since choosing this name for my new Bear Tank, the word "Brick" has been marinating, infusing itself into my whole mindframe regarding Druid tanking. Bottom line is that it's just a fun word, and a damned fine metaphor for the tank role.

But enough on that. On to the sauce.

First, I have absolutely confirmed that while backstrafing away from an enemy, I can not only dodge their attacks while withdrawing, but also deliver my own attacks. And, at the moment of my choosing, I can drop a Nature's Grasp for the root and make a little distance. This could be very useful for tricky pulls where you are forced to pull two mobs but need a little one-on-one quality time with one of them.

All in all, it led to quite a few interesting encounters. Imagine me, strafing into trees and shrubberies while trying to learn how to backstrafe while still remaining aware of my surroundings. I still feel like a baby bear, batting around bunnies in the backyard. But, I tell you, there's a Brick inside, just waiting to claw his way out.

The day after I got Bear Form, I continued to struggle with what professions I'd pick up, and spent an evening doing prep work and chores. First, I took the long boat and train ride to Ironforge and trained up maces, happily ending my fishing pole's reign as the best weapon I could afford. After that I decided to grind out some startup capital and get the old economic engine up and running, churning out about 30 gold with various fish, herbs, leather, and other farmed goods, as well as a few well placed local recipes that tend to sell for a lot on the auction house. Some poor guy also bought a stack of Refreshing Spring Water from me for 10g. Now I know how Coca Cola Company feels.

I immediately dumped this income into a couple of green tanky items and a respectable lumberjack shirt. Let's face it. I'm going for the "Brick" effect, and nothing about a wiry pink-skinned Night Elf with his chest-bits showing says "Brick" to me. Lumberjack shirt took care of that issue. I now feel that I can call myself an ursine of promise. That shirt will be with me forever, I have a feeling about this.

Fully recognizing that these profession choices are temporary, I picked up herbalism and skinning, and started to make the most of them. While doing so I had time to think about the three main gathering professions. Each of them "feeds" one or more of the crafting professions (I'm not talking one-off recipes that require a crossover item, but honest daily working relationships here). Skinning feeds only Leatherworking. Herbalism feeds both Inscription and Alchemy. Mining feeds Engineering, Blacksmithing, AND Jewelcrafting. Experience tells me that there's a glut of glyphs on the auction house, because people rarely need to change their glyphs out, so there's not a great deal of income in Inscription, effectively negating it from the list of potential professions I could feed with a given gathering specialist. Some time ago, I recall reading a comparison of the end-game profession benefits on Druid effective health, and Engineering was high on the list. Experience confirms that engineering makes for fun tanking. So, I can guarantee I'll switch Brickflank into Engineering at some point. It's also worth noting that as you go through the leveling process you tend to accumulate tremendous amounts of various materials. I don't think that maintaining two serious gathering professions on the same character is in the cards for me, at least not for very long. Brickflank is destined to be an engineer, but I'm not resolved on whether or not I'll make him a miner as well. Skinning begets Crit and leather for tanky gear as I level.

I had a proverbial "moment of fear and pain" deciding how to allot my first handful of talent points. It really comes down to two choices. First there is Furor, which gives us that rush of Light, Sweet, Rage upon first switching into Bear Form and helps to prime the line for an opening Maul. The second is Ferocity, which reduces the Rage and Energy requirements for a host of our front line skills such as Maul, Swipe, Claw, Rake and Mangle.

You want them both. It's true, but until L19 you can't handle them both. Too much power in one so young leads only to the dark side. Or so I'm told.

I went with Ferocity, because it comes with a guarantee, whereas climbing the ladder to Furor 5 still leaves a chance of zero effect in the crucial opening moments of an encounter. It could mean the difference between holding aggro on a group fight and wiping on a pull.

Level 12 brought with it Enrage and Revive, both of which will prove tremendously useful for when I get in over my furry little head or things go South in a fight. And I will. I've got a full slate of quests lined up in Darkshore and plan to pound back some levels tonight and push for L19, at which point I might actually turn off XP for a bit and do some tanking in Deadmines and Wailing Caverns, try out the new random dungeon feature, and get back out in front of a crew.

Coming up: A glimpse at glyphs, tanking cuisine, bartender and macros for baby bears and a special surprise for old times' sake.

First Encounter in Bear Form

Fresh from the Moonglade at level 10, and flush from having just achieved my Bear Form, the first thing I did was savor the beautiful new druid bear model, then promptly ran off into the forest to pick a pixel fight and get a sense of where I need to improve.

Immediately, insight. Armed only Growl, Maul, and vendor whites, I took a few nasty hits and a year and a half of tanking memories came flooding back to me.

The lesson I took away was this: the essence of playing a druid tank is knowing when and how to use your abilities from non-bear forms to amplify your bear abilities. In my case, as a level 10 Bear fresh from the press, this means using Thorns, Mark of the Wild, Wrath, and Moonfire, and then switching to Bear form. In the first few levels as a feral druid, we really need to learn to get the most out of our other abilities, and to get used to switching between our forms.

And, as the march of progress slowly drums along, it's very easy to forget that lesson. I'm glad that I'm coming back to the game in this way--starting from scratch really makes me appreciate my other Druid, and what other players go through on their first journey to the top.

One thing I'm doing right away, as long as I'm relearning how to tank from scratch, is teaching myself to strafe backwards. Instead of tucking tail and running from an encounter, a Bear tank should turn sideways and strafe away from the attacking mob. This back-strafing technique allows us to dodge attacks even as we withdraw at full speed. Tucking tail is (rightly) punished by completely disabling our Dodge ability. This technique can save our skin when shadowmeld is on cooldown.

Remember: A Leatherbelly never runs away from a fight. They backstrafe. Also, a Leatherbelly goes into combat buffed, with the target debuffed, whenever possible.

Choosing a profession for a new druid on a new server

After a ten month hiatus I recently returned to Azeroth and rolled a Kal'Dorei druid named Brickflank on the same server where Etaiu lives. At this time I have six characters on that server, but Brickflank is my first main ever on the Alliance side. I'm reserving the last two slots for my Troll and Worgen druids when Cataclysm hits. I look forward to bringing more Druid Tank content in the coming months.

Aside from the joys of playing an entirely new race and my first alliance character, I'm really excited to be able to write about the Druid tanking experience that corresponds with the leveling process. With the new dungeon finder, I expect I'll get to do a lot more tanking than I ever have in the past. Some folks grind their characters through the levels as fast as they possibly can. But for new players or first characters on a server, since you don't necessarily have your economic engine up and running you have to make some difficult choices.

First, in order to be the best tank you can be, you will need a stable and reliable income source. Whether you need to pick up potions from the auction house, or new armor as you level, being a flash and swagger leatherbelly is a more attractive proposition than being just another mangy and impoverished furball from Kalimdor. But, endgame tanks are usually very concerned with what advantages their endgame professions confer onto them.

So, when choosing professions for a new character, how do you play it? Gathering professions such as mining, skinning and herbalism will bring in a constant income stream, whereas crafting professions such engineering, leatherworking, and alchemy actually cost you gold as you level. In 2009, Blizzard added new crafting recipes for some of the crafting professions to make them more viable and competitive for leveling. But the common wisdom is to stick with gathering professions for your first character. Getting into a guild can help you gain access to the equipment from the crafting professions.

Finally, druids make excellent gatherers. We don't need to leave our feral forms in order to use skinning or herbalism. When we get flight form, this is even more useful. And, if we are smart about what we sell and what we keep as we work our way through the leveling experience, we can end up with a large amount of the rare and difficult to find items by the time we are high level. At that point, if we want to change a profession, we'll have a stockpile of the items needed to do so painlessly. I had a fully trained miner / blacksmith on The Venture Co and when the time came to level up Engineering on my first druid, Etaiu, I had an alt guild bank full of minerals, stone, and other materials, and as a result I brought him from 0-400 in one night.

Having leveled a few crafters before, I know that the profession grinding process leads to a glut of crafted gear on the markets. Also, it's very easy to find someone to craft an item for you while you're leveling, as long as you have the "mats" or material components. So, I've elected, for now, to level my druid as an herbalist and a skinner. My PvP alt has mining and skinning, so I'll have a big old stack of hard-to-find materials when I reach Northrend, if I should choose to switch to a crafting profession.

As a side note, having gone through the leveling process a number of times before, I'm paying a lot more attention this time through to my fishing and cooking skills. Having buff food throughout the leveling process, and having the extra income from these core professions can really come in handy.

Plus, I like to fish. You can even find some tanking booze from early fishing zones, and having some extra cash to spend on my first dungeon tanking gear will be really useful. Since I just hit level 10 yesterday I'll be working on gearing and leveling up for the Stockades and Wailing Caverns for the next day or two, then plan to spend a little time on those instances and really savor them. Hopefully I'll be able to offer useful tips for others who are leveling up their bear tanks.