Through my years of playing World of Warcraft, I found myself more and more “dependant” on Add-ons. Starting out with a simple ‘Omen’ or ‘DamageMeters’, I now dare to call myself an Add-on-aholic.

My interface.
On my interface, there is only one thing that remains default. My Buffs/Debuffs. The only reason for this is that I haven’t found an add-on that can do things better then the default. Sure, I have tried ‘Elkano’s BuffBars’ but I found it not adding anything I need. Maybe I must just accept that the default here, might just be just what I need!

Needs.
Obviously, the question arrives; “What Add-ons do you actually need to tank?”
I’m not sure, but thinking about it, I doubt there is one that is really needed. There are those however that make a huge difference.
In the old days, you had to have Omen, not because you needed to know your threat, but your DPS needed to know yours. Nowadays, threat is only a minor issue untill you reach high-end raiding. Also, Omen collects his data from the ingame threatmeter, so unless you like to have a nice looking visual, and I you know I do, there is no reason to have Omen running at all.

Recommended.
To talk about all my add-ons in one post is not only a waste of interesting topics for the future, it would probably also make this post extremely long. So I would limit this post to the add-ons I absolutely recommend, with a very small explanation why. (if there are any add-ons on which you like to read more, please leave a comment and I will address that add-on first when going into detail!)

Note: These are the add-ons I like to play with. As stated, they are by no means needed and some might outright not even be useful for you. As rule of thumb when using add-ons, use what you think Works well for you. That I why it’s called “personalizing your interface”!

XPerl.
As an old-time XPerl lover. I like the way it is set up and it can do anything I would like a Unit-Frame Add-on to do. Point is, you ‘need’ an add-on which easily tell you what you need to know. I like to move my healthbar and target to the centre of the screen, near my character and this is impossible with the Default.
Some people might prefer PittBull, Shadowed Unit Frames or the likes.

XPerl.
More important though, is the status of your Group. XPerl, like many other add-ons provides a nice Raid-Group overview. Not only healers should be aware of their groups health, but so should you!
Lots of players also prefer to use ‘Grid’ for this purpose.

Recount.
Great way to keep an eye on your DPS and more importantly.. your TPS. And in combination with Omen, a great way to see who might have the best use of your Vigilance (Warrior’s only).
Skada seems to do pretty much the same.

Power Aura’s.
This Add-on deserves a post on itself and will get one soon enough. I use this to see when my stuff Procs and to keep track of important buffs/debuffs.

Bartender.
Great way to place my actionbars wherever I might need them. Also for the people who like gimmicks in their interface, you can make them appear or disappear on various events like whether you are in combat or not, if your target is friendly or not, if your pet is out or not and many many more. The ability to relocate your actionbars still stays it most useful function however.
There are many, many more add-ons which can do this.

As you can see, this post is already rather lengthy and there is way more to tell about add-ons.
I will probably be making some more topics on both general and tanking add-ons. Like I said earlier, let me know if there are specific add-ons you would like me to talk about. If not, I’ll make my own pick on which one I deem the most interesting to rattle on about.

It’s been about 3 weeks since my last login on WoW and it feels so much longer. If I think what I might have missed in those 3 weeks my mind starts spinning.
Why I haven’t logged in for so ‘long’? Multiple reasons. The most severe, not having much time at all. Well, I always say we all have the same amount of time each day, so I must correct myself and say I have so much other things to do with my time.

XBOX.
Apart from my fulltime job, sleep, girlfriend and social life, I have about 2 to 4 hours left on avarage each workday. I used to spend most of those hours playing WoW. But as of late, my XBox is eating heartilly away at that time.
I still haven’t finished Final Fantasy XIII and I am dying to do so, My Girlfriend bought me Red Dead Redemption. (Yes, I will continually try to make you jalouse by telling how great my girlfriend is!)
Red Dead Redemtion is a dream come true. I got very much bored with the GTA games for being more of the same, and now they combined it with Cowboys! How awesome is that!
Then there is Call of Duty; Modern Warfare 2. I am now Rank 66 (Only 4 more ranks to go) and more addicted then ever! (Hardcore Team Deathmatch FTW!)
On top of that there are a few other games I am dying to play (again) including, Batman Arkham Assylum, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, Overlord II, Lego Star Wars the full Saga, Mass Effect and a few that don’t come to mind now.

Dillema.
Now do you see my dillema? 2 to 4 hours a day, and so much to do in those hours. Sure, I have the weekends, but I also like to spend some time with friends, family and my Girlfriend so that still limits those days to about 3-6 hours a day (tops).
Each day is a challenge to decide which game to play!

Time to Tank.
No worries though. I enjoy writing this blog, I enjoy playing World of Warcraft and I love to tank. I have some pretty interesting new posts in my head which needs a bit of time to work out properly, so if you enjoy reading this, I’m sure there will be more soon enough.

He is my lvl80 Paladin and main Paladin for the project. While I leveled him as Retribution, I quickly switched to Protection at 80. Took a while to get him Crit-immune. Of all the tanks, I think a Paladin is the hardest to get Heroic ready. (maybe tied with a Warrior) The Druid gets crit-immune by talents alone, so all you need is a healthy bit of Stamina and some Agility, and the Death Knight gets “Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle” which actually nets you a lot of Defensive!

However, after achieving Crit-Immunity, you are basically Heroic ready. I would stay away from Trial of the Champions and the Icecrown 5’s for a bit though.
It is remarkable how easily the heroics go even if you have relatively low-level gear. Getting the rotation down wasn’t all too hard, especially with the P.I.S.S. addon (Protection is Surprisingly Stupendous).

Mana trouble
Being used to a Warrior, I do have to say that the Mana Management stays difficult. The best solution to this for me is to always use Judgement of Wisdom combined with Seal of Wisdom. In the rare cases that this still leaves me out of mana, or when I am too lazy to care, I use Greater Blessing of Wisdom and I am basically swimming in Mana.

With all the difficulties out of the way, we’re off to what makes Paladin Tanking enjoyable. Consecration is what comes to mind. Not doing the most of damage from the looks of it, it is an amazing AoE tanking tool.. It basically locks the enemies on you.
Also, the rotation is quite fun really. Like I said before.. P.I.S.S. makes it very easy to learn the ‘rotation’ by telling you what ability is best used now and next. P.I.S.S. does not look at the target, your mana and you surroundings, so there should still be some thinking on your own part. You might want to prioritize Consecration on multi-mob pulls, use Hammer of Righteousness (multiple target attack) over Shield of righteousness (single target attack) if you have adds coming into the fight or use Judgement of Wisdom over anything else if you are really low on mana! (Being out of mana is even worse than the 6 seconds of waiting on DK-Multi-mob Tanking)

As we’re on the subject of add-ons anyway.. is there somebody who can briefly teach me how to use PallyPower? (or link me a page to a good guide?) For some reason I really fail at understanding this basically mandatory add-on. Buffing “manually” seems to keep me alive during my 5-man runs, but I am truly dreading the day for my first 25-man..

I’m giving what? To who?

But, I wanna DPS..

Well, feel free to join my Group.. if you manage to do more damage then me, I’ll be your tank forever. The change to Revenge makes me hit 2 targets at once with a devastating attack!
Really, I hardly ever get out damaged in instances anymore. Hatefully my Girlfriend greatly out damages me with her druid, but it being her 3rd druid over 60 I suspect she just really understands the class. Never got to compare it to another Moonkin.

Yesterday evening I did a fast run in Mana-Tombs.
Group:
Lvl 66 Warrior (That would be me)
Lvl 69 Druid (That would be my Girlfriend healing on her druid)
Lvl 67 Rogue (PuG)
Lvl 65 Shaman (PuG)
Lvl 66 Hunter (PuG)

The rogue was very hasty and very quick to attack. If my Girlfriend would just for once stop the urge to fill every green bar, I would have let him die for pulling or attacking mobs before I can, forcing me to fight where he chooses instead of where I choose! He did a nice and respectable 509 DPS overall. (Total damage done: 337625)

The hunter was an even more trigger-happy player. Fortunately, he was a little better at the agro thingy and he hardly pulled mobs away from me. His DPS was a little lower than the rogue, but sitting at a nice 413.2 it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Especially considering his total damage done. (Total damage done: 317733)

The shaman did a little worse in the damage department. Coming in at 382.8 DPS isn’t all too bad, but his total damage done shows he was a bit slow around the edges. At level 65 this is nothing to be really ashamed of, but there is room for improvement. Which won my heart during this run however was the fact he is one of the few shaman I see below 80 who make full use of totems! (not always 4, but never missed an important one!) (Total damage done: 211492)

Now, our healer and my loving Girlfriend. Not only did she keep me up during the instance in her Moonkin-spec, halfway through, she was so bored, she decided to do some damage on the side. Soon there was no way around her on the damagemeters! Finishing up with nearly as much as the shaman with only 206.2 DPS (Since she did no damage for the first half of the instance, this number might as well be doubled to show her average DPS for the latter half of the instance) Guess all those off-raids and many, many heroics at both 70 (pre-3.0) and 80 have paid off! (Total damage done: 200347)

What about the tank?

Yes, back to the reason for this post! Not only did I do around 150% DPS of our top DPS, I also got twice his damage done!
769.3 DPS – 660880 Damage done.
Now I don’t have any hard numbers of what I would do in an Arms spec or a Fury spec. But I do know that with my lower arm/fury warriors, I’m not even coming close to what I do with my lower Prot warriors. I might do some more “research” on this when my Tauren Warrior reaches 40 and is the same level as my Orc Warrior.
I’m just hoping the LFD-queue’s for my DPS will be gentle!

LFG Cathedral. Need Tank and Healer!

So if you have Twitter, please follow me on @ProjectTank and you’ll get a message each time I do something worth letting you know! (posts/updates/my Birthday )

Hope to see you as a follower soon!

~Baruti.

Meet the Death Knight.
Her name is Searinox. Been playing with her for a bit at 80. Did a few (H) Instances.. and liked it lots!
For now the spec is Blood. The rotation seemed the easiest to pick up, and I always leveled Blood, so it seemed like an obvious choice.
My current rotation is pretty basic as well.

Single Target:
Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Death Strike -> RuneDump (usually 1 or 2 Death Coils) -> Death Strike -> Heart Strike x4… And repeat.

Multi Target:
Death and Decay -> Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Pestilence -> Long wait, I usually get to dump 1 or 2 Death Coils.. but still I remain a long time without runes! -> After that, depending on my mood I use Blood Boil or Heart Strike on my Blood and Death Runes, and for the Unholy and Frost Runes, I use Death Strike. Restarting this whole thing when the diseases run out!

Still, I feel abit weird about using Blood Boil. I know Threat is something really different from Damage. But the Blood Boil hardly seems to get any decent numbers, so i usually use Heart Strike and Tab through my targets a bit.

Might not be the best way to come by, but as I am still learning, this’ll do just fine untill I find better things or somebody comes along to educate me a bit! (feel free to do so in the comments here!)

And they are all Crit-Immune now. Was pretty difficult for my Paladin. He is still using lots of Defense gems. but hey, 535 Def is only the beginning.

Getting my Death Knight Crit-Immune wasn’t all that difficult actually… Guess Stonekin Gargoyle (Runeweapon enchant) helps a lot!

As for now the prefered order of classes is:
Warrior > Death Knight > Paladin > Druid. But still lots to learn and many things that might influence this preference!

~Baruti.

The main idea is to expirience all tanks all levels.

The ultimate goal will be to maintank The Lich King (pref pre-nerf) with all the tank classes. But the many subgoals is what hopefully makes this blog a nice one to follow.

Expect posts about my expiriences reaching the big goals, but also any other things that have to do with tanking. For now I will have no intentions covering the class-changes and theorycrafting, there are places way more suited for that.

Starting position:

Interesting for now might be the starting position at which I will start my quest so I will start by introducing myself.

My name is Baruti Moonstrider of the EU Steamwheedle Cartel Server (RP-FTW!)

I have created, lead and maintanked in the guild <Avalanche> during The Burning Crusade. We started in Karazhan and ended up at 4/5 MH and 2/9 BT pre-3.0 Nerf. (after the nerf we killed both Illidan and Achimonde and killed the first 2 bosses in Sunwell.)

I have done all this on my warrior. After all this time, I still consider my Warrior as my main character and favourite class. As you might expect, I reached all sub-goals with my Warrior. Only The Lich King remains.

As I am not actively raiding, that goals is, even with my Warrior, far far away!

As for my Druid, My Girlfriend leveled it to 70 as a birthday gift a year ago, and I got it to 80 short after my Warrior. I started healing and Moonkinning my way into heroics before pretty much abandoning it for a long time. When the idea for Project Tank came to mind, I specced it Feral-Tank and did a few Normal-80 Instances. Now I am, pretty passively, in the process of getting it Heroic-Ready!

For my Paladin, I leveled it to 50-ish long ago and got pretty bored. Then when Wrath hit the stores, I started enjoying Retribution a lot to level. Extremely overpowered against most questmobs, EoA’ing my way through most quests, I just lolled it to 80! There, it remained for a long time. Now, I have it geared in the lvl78 blue PvP craftables in a Ret/Holy spec. Having no tanking expirience with my Paladin, it’s time to let this Bubble-boy join the project and respec it to Protection!

Last but not least, The Death Knight! When Wrath hit, I leveled it through TBC-content with extreme ease and joy! At 72 I got a bit bored and came back to my Warrior. Now, a year later, it’s still sitting at 77.Having tanked a few TBC-Normals with my 2nd Death Knight, I have little expirience tanking wrath-content, but, with the start of Project Tank, it’s getting to 80 soon and I’m gonna change that soon.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope you will keep an eye on this blog.

Any feedback is very welcome.

~Baruti Moonstrider

Currently looking most forward to: Getting my DK to 80!