Okay so maybe 1001 is pushing it, but Intervene is such a potent and versatile tool that we have in our Warrior arsenal it’s a shame that 90% of the time, if they use it at all, you’ll only see tanks using it to peel a mob off of a DPSer or a healer who pulled aggro. There is a big problem with this mentality and that is that if you are running with a good group you’ll never ever use this ability.
Intervene is an extremely powerful ability when used in other ways, here are some examples:
- Pulls. Intervene is great for making those pulls that are too far away from your raid group, but need to be moved into another room either due to the pathing of other mobs or a bosses or because they have casters and you need to LOS them around a corner. Think back to Karazhan and the Arcane Anomalies directly before Curator. Since Curator paths right through the room that these mobs are in it is beneficial to have a raid member stand near the door way into the adjacent room, pull the mobs and Intervene back to your meatshie-errr, fellow raider. This will significantly reduce the amount of damage you take while getting back to your raid while also reducing the chance that you will put other raid members in unnecessary danger.
- Removing roots and stuns. With the addition of Warbringer to the game, Intervene is even more amazing since you can use it to break roots and snares just by Intervening to a party or raid member who’s nearby.
- Increased mobility. Imagine tanking the adds in phase one for Gothik the Harvester: you can charge a mob that’s far away, Shield Slam it then immediately Intervene back to a party member and grab another mob who just spawned. If you use some Heroic Throws you can handle an entire side by yourself and look like a total rock star while doing it, too.
- Corpse runs. There is nothing like annoying Rogues and Mages by being able to make your way from the back of the raid to the front of it after a wipe by using Intervene numerous times to get there. Throw in some Swiftness Potions and you can get some serious giggles out of it. Sometimes you have to just do little things to keep your spirits up after a series of crushing wipes and I find that this helps me. It’s self-prescribed therapy.
- Reducing aggro. What? Reducing aggro? Why would I want to do this? Well the last half of the tooltip reads, “as well as reducing their total threat by 10%” so why not use that to our advantage? Pretend for a second you’re tanking Malygos (arguably one of the only fights in the game where aggro matters at this point) and a Fury Warrior is right on your heels when Malygos begins to fly to the center of the platform to use Vortex. If you quickly Intervene to him you can knock his threat down by 10%.
Remember that lots of abilities can be used drastically differently then the way their tooltip states and the more of these uses you can find, the better tank you’ll be!
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Now that the craziness of the Holidays are over and I’ve done a little bit of skiing, snowmobiling and relaxing, I’m here to present to you part two of the gearing guide for new tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. This series started with Beginning Your Tanking Career, Getting 540 Defense and, as promised (though a bit late), here is the loot from heroics and badge items that you should be on the look out for now that you’re decked-out in all of your beautiful blue gear.
Note: “Badge” in this case refers to Emblems of Heroism, not Emblems of Valor of Badges of Justice.
Items Without a Badge Replacement
If I were you, these are the items I would focus on getting every day while accumulating badges to purchase other items. This is especially the case if you don’t have a lot of play time.
Weapon: Run Utgarde Pinnacle until you’re blue in the face and pick up the Red Sword of Courage.
Bracers: Head over to Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom and get yourself a pair of the Bracers of the Herald. Just make sure you didn’t do what I did and bring a Death Knight who wants to tank; they will win the roll and force you to come back nine or ten more times to get your own pair. As an aside, I’m not bitter. Really I’m not.
Ring: At the end of Drak’Tharon Keep is the most boring boss in the expansion, Prophet Tharon’ja, but he drops Keystone Great-Ring so it’s not all bad.
Pants: Violet Hold is where you’ll find the Bolstered Legplates which drop off of Cyanigosa.
Shield: I hope you enjoy the Culling of Stratholme since you’ll want to run it every day until you get the Royal Crest of Lordaeron. Not only is this an awesome shield but it looks amazing as well, one of Blizzards best-looking models ever. Note: there is a badge-shield available but unless you got really bad luck with the drop from Stratholme, I don’t really think of it as a replacement, per se. Plus this shield looks amazing while the Badge one looks like some hairy skin pulled over a metal frame.
Items With a Badge Replacement
Belt: You can find the Ancient Aligned Girdle clutched within Anub’arak’s talons at the end of Azjol-Nerub.
Gloves: And finally in Gun’drak you’ll have to beat a silly troll named Gal’darah senseless to get him to drop the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets.
And Finally… the Badge Gear
I’m not really going to bother repeating everything that Veneretio over at TankingTips.com has already said. Go read his Emblem of Heroism article entitled, The Badge err… Emblem of Heroism Pick Order. It should have everything you need to make an informed decision on what pieces of gear to get next.
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