It seems like about a couple of months now, but Kadomi over at Tank Like A Girl gave me a shout out for a little game called “Sixth of Sixth”.  The premise is simple: go into your World of Warcraft folder, find your sixth screenshot folder and post the sixth screenshot in that folder.

I don’t have any screenshot folders so I just grabbed the sixth screenshot and boy howdy is it awesome:

Baby Spice + Mechano-Hog = Win.  I love it.

Popularity: 60% [?]

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% [?]

I just wanted to drop a quick line and let everyone know that I’m still alive.  Trying to level to 80 (dinged 75 last night, w00t!) combined with heavy work weeks are starting to take their toll, but I will be back to blogging in no time.

Popularity: 8% [?]

This topic recently came up in a thread on TankSpot so I figured I’d give it a go myself in writing something up about it, perhaps I’ll even make it an on-going series of subject matter here provided anyone is interested.

There are exactly two instances I can think of off of the top of my head where it is okay to taunt a mob off of another tank.  Hopefully you guys will help me think of a couple more.

1. Boss strategy. When a boss encounter calls for it, like Vashj.  When the main tank gets rooted (pre-Warbringer anyway) or stunned during Phase 1 or 3, it’s important for the OT to immediately pick her up.
2. To preserve another tank. When you might be out of range of healers and the tank that has a mob is about to die.  A good example of this is the Infernals that drop during Kaz’rogal and Azgalor trash in Hyjal.  Another example was on our Illidan kill last night; one of our Flame tanks went down and I stepped in long enough for the first one to die, then the living Flame tank taunted it back off of me.

This means that if the situation you find yourself in doesn’t fall into one of the top two categories, do not taunt off of another tank. I don’t care if you’re a better tank or better geared or whatever the excuse is, it is a slap in the face of the other tank if you do this.  On a very basic level you are saying to that tank that you do not trust them to do their job.*

We all accidentally taunt, just because you do doesn’t make you a terrible tank but please apologize for it.  A quick, “sorry about that, Bob the Tank” in Vent can help smooth it all over and stop a potential flare-up from occurring.  And believe me when I say that they will know what you’re apologizing for.

There is one situation in which taunting off of another tank’s target is acceptable, though it still isn’t the best idea in the world, and that is AOE tanking.  As far as I’m concerned in these hectic situations as long as the mobs are not on the DPS or the healers it not a problem and you should not take someone taunting off of you personally, you should be happy that you are all doing your job and not allowing the raid to take unnecessary damage.

*If you really don’t trust the other tank, instead of taunting off of them stop bringing them to raids.

Popularity: 16% [?]

This is the inagural post of the Orly Factor blog.  This site is going to be written by two people who play WoW; a healer and a tank who are also a couple and live in the same house.  We are going to give out tips on how to tank and heal, problems we have faced as officers in our guild, tips for a smooth raid and any number of other things we feel is worthy of writing about as long as it relates to World of Warcraft.

Popularity: 8% [?]