Thursday, April 2, 2009

PvP happened. (And ding 73)

It's rather peaceful in Howling Fjord compared to Borean Tundra. Fewer players around means fewer gankers. Even so, it's not uncommon to find a level 80 death knight ready to kill you for fun.

Why is it always a death knight?

At any rate, every death knight ganker seems to have the same boring strategy: find a lowbie that won't pose a threat, cast Death Grip from max range, and faceroll the keyboard to victory. But predictability lends itself to exploitation. The instant I saw an 80 dk hovering where he should not have been I knew what was coming, and poised one finger over my Freezing Trap button. With my enemy temporarily immobilized, I hit Aspect of the Cheetah and sprinted into the middle of the Alliance NPC cannoneers outside Westguard Keep, who were more than happy to help me out. Last I saw of the valiant Ebon Knight "Iraqicrmpie", he was running half-dead towards a cliff. Thanks, Ely, I owe you one.

Anyway.

Even Auden has gone over to the dark side, rolling a DK on Gweryc's new server. Her death knight, however, likes squirrels and children and pretty flowers, so I agreed to help her out in Scholomance. Pet tanking is so very, very different from tanking in first-person. I actually did better when I stood back and watched the fight, treating my bear Artuir like a remote-controlled toy rather than trying to engage enemies concurrently. I came away from the experience with a short shopping list:
  • Patch 3.1. I need Thunderstomp on my bear. Now.
  • Level 80, so I have all my neat tanking talents.
  • Something to assign raid markers easily and quickly.
  • Something better than Omen to alert me when a raid member is stealing aggro, possibly...
  • Grid, configured for Intervene/Taunt instead of healing.
I'm seriously thinking about using a different hotbar for main tanking than soloing, with just my pet attacks macroed to it. I remain surprised by just how much easier it is to coordinate pet tanking when you're 30 yards away, versus all up in some boss crotch.

I'm going to browse the tanking sections of a couple addon sites and see if there's anything I can abuse for my own ends. I'll let you know if I find anything indispensible.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I know I know, i am forever the bearer of bad news.

"Taunts: All player or pet-generated taunts now have a shared diminish category. In addition, Taunt-type effects from pets and from classes other than death knight, druid, paladin, and warrior have been set such that bosses can be made immune to them while still affected by death knight, druid, paladin, and warrior taunts."

Posted by Ancilorn on 2/24
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/13/8136495630-310-ptr-patch-notes.html

Gweryc said...

That's not too bad, I suppose. If you're repeatedly pulling aggro on trash, you deserve to die, and on bosses it's just a question of watching your threat meter. As long as they're not nerfing Growl, it's tolerable.

Nogamara said...

Try BaudMark at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/baud-mark.aspx - I used to run with it for months, although nowadays I just have skull and cross bound to Ctrl+X/Shift+X

Anonymous said...

Holy poo! I was worried you wouldn't level your pet project! Glad to see your back!

Ya as for the DK(s) you should see what they can do when you actualy play them. I curbstomped some lvl 66 warrior on my DK which was 62.

DK side aside I am excited to hear more of your adventures to come.

----Kabasue