More Tanking Woes
It’s been a looong time since I took Rozamystica out and so I was a bit rusty when I brought her out as official “late night tank” (to use Ender’s words). And oh boy was it a challenge. I was rusty at first, but later on I thought I was doing about as well as possible.
I realize there was some problems caused by:
- Bad lag: Sunder Armor is supposed to be an instant ability…
- Being lower level: Uggh… UD Strat all over again.
- Inferior gear: The Thunderwood Poker isn’t cutting it. I’ve heard that slower weapons are better now with the way Devastate works.
- Beast Mastery: ZOMFG Velius, WTF is Fang’s problem? His Growl ability is so ridiculously overpowered that it eats Sunder Armor for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- Lack of Smart Assist: It sucks not knowing immediately when a secondary mob switches target. Tab/click targetting also blows. I loved this mod for just keeping track of mob targets.
I’m thinking about revising Roza’s talent tree a bit for more threat/aggro generation. Previously she was optimized for damage mitigation and avoidance, but that’s useless if I can’t keep the mob in front of me. I’m also dropping Improved Revenge; it doesn’t seem to kick in as often as it used to, and just isn’t that useful. I’m going to pick up Cruelty and more 1H-Specialization again when I get a chance and forego the abilities that decrease spell damage taken and increase amount blocked. This may change in endgame, but for now it seems that upping Roza’s anemic DPS is priority number 1. This may also help with the grind, as I refuse to change Roza to a DPS warrior. I wish I could get enough points in Arms to get Impale, but I’d lose way too many of the deep Protection Tree talents and they are just too good to give up (basically the opposite of how the Protection Tree looked before TBC).
I think whenever Roza gets the next rank of Sunder Armor and gets a better weapon (so that white damage helps more with hate retention) things will get a bit better. Sunder Armor and Revenge don’t scale with equipment, so the next ranks better be really good. Against 60+ level characters, those two abilities no longer do enough threat (even though I was spamming them, I still had to taunt almost every time it was up). Unfortunately, Shield Slam is too expensive and the cooldown is too long and so it cannot be spammed. I also am not completely sure about the mechanics of Devastate, and don’t know how many Sunders need to be applied before Devastate is a viable alternative.
It’ll be interesting to see how fast Rozamystica and Sariana level. If I can get someone to help me do quests and if most of the leveling involves grinding instances, I have a feeling that Sariana will hit 70 first. In our group, Sariana is the only Priest, and it should be easy to pick up PUGs. However, since I don’t want to ever go back to being a Shadow Priest, Sariana is basically useless while soloing. Roza on the other hand can solo, but veeeerrrrrry slowly (we’re talking almost LOLadin slow). However, since Roza likely will not level very quickly, it won’t be long before she is stuck in a cycle of being always undergeared and underleveled. This is ok for healers, but Warrior is much too gear dependent, so I’m predicting that Sariana will hit 70 first. I really like Roza, but I think I like healing more than I like tanking. If only Gnomes could be Priests!
Tags: world of warcraft
By Velius, 1/18/2007 @ 2:27 pm
It’s kinda strange that Fang’s growl is so overpowered because when I am soloing, I can pull agro off Fang at will. Inside the instance, I couldn’t really pull agro that easily unless I just spammed arcane/steady like crazy.
On another note, Steady Shot is SOOOO incredibly awesome. You weave it inbetween your normal shots. I have had it crit upwards of 1k. Along with Arcane and Multi shot, Velius basically has a 1 second attack. Normal attack cycle goes:
Arcane, Auto, Steady, Auto, Steady, Auto, Multi in about a 5 second span.
By Velius, 1/18/2007 @ 3:02 pm
Btw:
Smart Assist
By Ender, 1/18/2007 @ 5:09 pm
Wasn’t Velius doing a lot of Feign Death during that instance run? He was practically Feign Tanking (Not to be confused with Fang Tanking).
By Kabitzin, 1/22/2007 @ 10:20 am
You used to be able to use the Smart Assist windows to choose targets, which was super useful for picking up targets, but I think this functionality has been stripped. While still useful for the information, Smart Assist is not nearly as good as it used to be.