I’ll admit that I have become lazy in some of my tanking and I think some of it has to do with the way warrior tanking changed so significantly when patch 3.0 hit, being able to lay out Thunder Claps and Shockwave made AOE raid tanking like Mount Hyjal a breeze, especially when there were numerous warrior tanks.

It has become pretty apprarent to me that the EZ MODE that was engaged when patch 3.0 hit is coming to an end now.  We’ve been raiding and clearing Naxx for weeks now and now that the DPS has really geared up quite a bit I find that I’m back to having to tab target during 5-man runs to stop DPS from pulling off of me when just using abilities like Whirlwind or Blade Flurry.  In 3.0 all I had to do was mash my hand in the general direction of Thunder Clap and Shockwave and I held AOE aggro without a problem but that just isn’t cutting the mustard anymore.

Tanking Resolution #1

I resolve to stop using just Thunder Clap and Shockwave to hold aggro on numerous targets.  I will use the other abilites that the creators of this video game have given me to stop falling into bad habits.  I will make heavy use of the TAB button along with Revenge, Shield Slam and Devastate.

Tanking Resolution #2

I will stop relying on other warriors in the group to use Demoralizing Shout.  This is another bad habit I have gotten into since I used to run with an Arms warrior with 5/5 in Improved Demoralizing Shout.  This in and of itself is not a bad thing, the bad thing is that I have forgotten it’s on my action bars at all.  I don’t use it on bosses 75% of the time and I don’t use it in 5-mans at all.

What are your resolutions?

Popularity: 69% [?]

Older readers might remember the post I made over two months ago about my speculation for tank gemming in the expansion entitled, “Tank Gemming in Wrath, some speculation”.  At the time almost nothing was known about tanking stats other then we needed 540 defense and there was much speculation on hit raiting, diminishing returns and the like.  In those two months, however, we’ve all learned a ton.  I found it only fitting then to bring back one of my old posts and update it.

Meta

• Eternal Earthsiege Diamond. There really is only one choice for your Meta slot and that’s this baby.  Not only is it a nice chunk of avoidance and mitigation in the form of defense, but the 5% Shield Block Value is just incredible.  I’m going into raids with over 1000 SBV even before I had a helm with a Meta slot, and this baby gives me about 50 SBV.

Blue

• Solid Sky Sapphire. Always and without fail I will slam a stamina gem into a blue socket because stamina is still an awesome survival stat.  Your healers will appreciate it; just ask Polgera.

Prismatic

• Solid Sky Sapphire. This section is reserved for your belt slot from the Eternal Belt Buckle and, for the Blacksmiths out there like myself, the sockets in our bracers and gloves.  My theory?  Stamina is good, but more stamina is better!  Maybe it’s just the Burning Crusade tank in me unable to let go of the STAMINA STAMINA STAMINA mentality but it’s worked thus far.

Red

• Guardian’s Twilight Opal. Expertise is the most important stat, in my opinion, that you can go for after you’ve reached 540 defense.  By pushing dodges off of the table, 25 Expertise is the best thing you can go for to increase your threat and your damage output.  Everything after that up until 57 Expertise is great for increasing your survivability.  This gem is fantastic for giving you more health and more expertise.
• Precise Scarlet Ruby.
  

Yellow

• Enduring Forest Emerald. Remember Veneretio’s post about How good is Defense?  Yeah, it’s that good.  Here I gem for it and stamina with a green gem.  In the early days of the expansion it was hard to find Jewelcrafters with this pattern since it’s so off-the-wall.  Every JC on my server had Solid Skyfire but only recently have their started to spend their daily tokens on this gem.

To you other tanks out there: now that the expansion has been here for a while how do you find yourself gemming?  Is it similar to my own concept or do you think I’m a nutjob?

Popularity: 73% [?]

We all know the great stigma attached with running in pick up groups for instances; the people are morons, the people there can’t play their classes, the crowd control is terrible, etc, etc.  This stigma is there and well-known because, well, generally it’s deserved.  I hear constant complaining about running in PUGs but there are two streaks of silver lining in the murky cloud that people don’t often see.

It Will Make You a Better Tank

The bottom line is that when you have to deal with the Mage that just has to Pyroblast when you pull or the Hunter that can’t trap or the Warlock that DoTs everything so he can top the DPS meters it makes you a better tank.  You learn to use all of your abilites and how to use every single trick you have to keep mobs stuck on you.

I was recently asked by a guild member, who just dinged 70 and wants to tank, for some tips of the trade.  I told him to go PUG.  PUG a lot.  PUG until your eyes bleed because the things you learn while PUGing are invaluable and will serve you for as long as you play the game and continue to have bosses punch you around.

I believe this topic has been hit on by other tanking bloggers but the other reason that people go to PUGs and is often overlooked is because…

It is a Valuable Recruiting Method

Yes, you will run into many groups where you can’t stand a single person in it.  But every now and then you’ll run into the diamond in the rough; that player who is in the guild that recruited him when he was level 1 but who knows how to play his class and is great to be around.  The type of person you want to bring into your guild.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Last week we got withing one minute of winning ourselves our first bear, it was that close. We took the same group back today, tightened things up a bit and downed all four bosses for our first Amani War Bear! We’ve worked so hard for this for so long I was so happy that we just got it done before patch 3.0 when you will no longer be able to get it.

Everyone but the people who didn’t want the mount rolled Need and guess who won? Me! I’m so stoked!

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If you are a fairly active guild with over 40 or 50 active accounts in it, I think it would behoove you greatly to start having monthly guild meetings.  If you have a fairly open-door policy during the meeting it will allow your guild members to get a lot of their grievances out into the open and help them feel better about their place in the guild.  This is also the best time to tell them about important guild changes such as raiding night rotation, introduce new class leaders, etc.

Here are some tips I suggest for smooth-running guild meetings:

1. Have it in-game, in Vent and in an interesting locations. We have a certain floating island in Nagrand that we use each month.  When people show up, they can chill by goofing off with emoticons or dueling while the nitty-gritty gets taken care of in Vent.  This has also led to at least one comical situation where a PvP-flagged Alliance character happened to come check out our little party.  Finally, it is quite heartening to see just how many people have your guild name and wear your tabard.
2. Have an agenda lined up. Let the guild members have a system for letting you know what they want to talk about prior to the meeting taking place.  This helps keep the meeting running smoothly and quickly.  What I do is have members of the guild message me in-game with the subject they would like to bring up.  I then keep all of that information in a text file on my desktop that is fast and easy to bring up in the middle of the meeting.  In case of a time crunch, the people who email me questions and are added to the agenda get priority over the people who bring stuff up at the meetings.
3. Make it respectful. It should be made very clear that the person with the floor isn’t to be interrupted during their initial schpeel.  Once they are done open the floor to questions but try very hard to limit off-topic conversation in Vent.  Questions should be asked and answered in an intelligent manner; this is not the time for “lawlz boobies” comments.
4. Don’t keep people for too long. If people start to get really ansy then don’t be afraid to call the meeting.  There is nothing wrong with coming back and visiting more topics in a thread on the guild forums or saving it until next month’s meeting.

That should just about cover the basics.  I highly recommend running a meeting or two and seeing how this works out with your guild, I can guarentee you that it will help increase the satisfaction of your guild overall and might help you get people to come forward who otherwise wouldn’t.

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