On downtime:

Slooooooow week out here in BTC-land.

With all the trying to 8-man the Jarraxus for the raid weekly, ('FLESH TROMBONE!' Now you won't be able to hear it otherwise. You're welcome.) the regular main tank having prior engagements both this week and the next, and out usually top-DPS DK having to switch to the Tankadin alt to fill in instead, we did not get to the Frost quarter... shame, too, because I really was looking forward to taking down Sindragosa. Hopefully, next week things will be ironed out between me and my temporary-co-tank, and we will be able to take her down. (ASDFJAKSDFJAKSDFALSJ HATE HER SO MUCH.)

Had a chance to take my Cat-based PVP build into ICC25... managed to top out at 8k DPS according to Recount on Saurfang.... I think I screwed up somewhere. I'll get another chance to try it again this coming Monday, but I think the raid leader will want me back on tanking duties. We'll see!

PVP post is still forthcoming, although it appears that I'm being recalled back to Resto duties... not so sure I want to go back, but I am entertaining the notion.

With apologies to Mary Schmich, Baz Luhrmann, and Lee Perry:

Ladies and gentlemen, tanks freshly 80:

Talk to your group.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, talking to your group would be it. You let them know what you're up to, they let you know what they're up to, and things generally go smoother that way. The rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own long-suffering experience. I will dispense this advice, now.

Look around you, and enjoy the environment. Oh, never mind. You will not understand just how awe-inspiring the dungeons that Blizzard makes are until long after everything's on farm status. But trust me, in 20 levels, you'll look around when retro-raiding and recall in a way you can't grasp just how fantastic the environment and atmosphere was, just how much detail Blizzard put into the game.

Don't worry about wipes. Or worry, but know that worry about wipes is about as effective as trying to /silly them to death. The serious wipes are apt to be the ones that happen when you go and one-shot Blood Princes, two-shot Blood Queen, and then bring Sindragosa down to 1% on your very first try.

Try to tank something more challenging each day.

/dance.

Don't be recless with other people's repair bills. Don't put up with people who are reckless with your repair bills.

Repair.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you win the loot roll. Sometimes some Elesham with a Resto offspec and no business in a Melee DPS trinket wins it. The path to BiS is long, and, in the end, loot comes and goes.

Remember the fun people when using the Dungeon Finder. Forget the insults from stupid ones. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old tank trinkets. Sell or DE your blues and greens.

Move out of the fire.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know if you want to keep tanking at 80. The best tank I know started playing WoW on a Warlock. She still plays that Warlock.

Run 5-man Normal Trial of the Champion. Get The Black Heart. I still use that trinket when tanking ICC-25, to this day.

Maybe you'll get A Tribute to Insanity, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll beat The Lich King, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll keep wiping on the last part of Heroic Halls of Reflection, maybe you'll PUG 25-man ICC and one-shot Sindragosa Hardmode. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your tanking is only one part of the equation. Healing and DPS are too.

Enjoy your insta-queues. Use it to help people out whenever you can. Guildies, friends, random strangers. They will appreciate it and you more than you'll ever know.

/dance, especially in the killshots when you first down a raidboss.

Read the guides to tanking on Tankspot, Wowhead, or Wowwiki, even if that one obstinate DPS doesn't follow them.

Do not read the sites of top raiding guilds. They will only make you feel inferior.

Get to know your guild officers. You never know when they'll retire from the game. Be nice to your guildmates. They work just as hard at content as you, and you need them to progress.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Try to bridge the gaps in geography and work and school for raid times, but understand that a game is a game, and real life takes first precedence, even if you're the main tank or the fight-gimmick-enabler.

Play a healer to 80 once, but stop before it makes you bitter. Play a DPS to 80 once, but stop before it makes you soft. Tank.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Epic BoEs are expensive. Raids will wipe. You too, will get tired of tanking. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, epic world drops were cheap, raids never wiped on Professor Putricide, and Children's Week quests weren't bugged.

Respect your elders. The internet does give you free rein to be rude, ya whippersnappers.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a rich guild. Maybe you've cornered a market on the AH. But you never know when either one might vanish in a puff of smoke.

Don't mess too much with your spec, or by the time you figure it out, you'll have blown more gold than a goblin competing against a gnome trying to build a better death ray, only to come to the same conclusion that Elitist Jerks did five patches ago.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of looting a crystallized element from a trash mob, mailing it off to an alt, running it through a few professions, then crafting a BoE and putting it up on the AH for more than it's worth.

But trust me on talking to your group.

-BearTreeCat

On Cataclysm changes:

Did you guys have a good weekend? Happy Mother's Day to any and all mothers out there. I'm pretty sure that's not the only thing that happened to you guys over the weekend, though. Because, y'know, there's just a tiny little thing called a "Cataclysm Friends and Family Alpha Leak" that happened over at MMO-Champion...

...and I'm not going to cover it. I'm not. Just flat out, plain not going to cover it. It's an Alpha build, plenty of talents have not yet been implemented, not all of the boring talents that need to be pruned have been pruned, and I don't care to have to revise things every time a new alpha build comes out. Maybe once it hits closed beta, definitely once it hits open beta, but not at the alpha stage.

I hear there are some pretty screenshots to be looking at, though!

-BearTreeCat

Point Break

Um... new blue post is up. And I dare say it fills me with trepidation. Still, I'm going to keep the "woohoo!~" in the holster.

Basically, the point is this: Instead of Emblems, you rack up points instead. Hero points (low-end) and Valor points, (high-end) like how we have Honor points and Arena points. (Arena points are being converted to Conquest points, earnable from both the rated BGs and Arena, but that's a different matter.)

When a new tier of raiding gear or PVP gear is released, everyone gets their high-end points converted into low-end points. Fair enough, it'll keep the bloat of different flavors of emblems down to a minimum. (I'm up to 195 EoF, by the way. I think I might just hold onto them all until I can buy the head and chest T10, and the Corroded Skeleton Key all at once. This way, I can keep renting the Skeleton Key from the ICC vendor in the meantime.)

Also according to the devs, there's a cap on high-end points earned weekly:

"To explain the reasoning for the weekly cap on points for the higher tiers, this is to provide flexibility in how players choose to earn the points without feeling like they have to do all of the content as often as it is available. If your Valor income from raiding is sufficient, you may not feel the need to run Dungeon Finder every night, or perhaps even at all. Likewise, a PvP player could choose to participate in a lot of Rated Battlegrounds but no Arenas, or focus on both, and still be able to earn the points they want."

Now, I am *all* for rated BGs. If there is one thing that has consistently irked me, it has been that Arena just doesn't fly for me at all. Either my 3v3 isn't all on, or we suck to much, or whatever, point being, PVP weapons are consistently Top 5 in terms of PvE tanking thanks to the overinflated Stamina and Agility numbers on the weapons. Also,

"We're removing personal rating requirements on almost all items; they're definitely removed for weapons"

There is no guarantee that future seasons' gear will remain overinflated with Stamina and Agility once everyone's stats are revamped, but if they remain even somewhat in-line with their current state, you can bet that you will see a LOT more Ferals in PvP, gearing themselves for raid content.

-BearTreeCat

Queuing as DPS

It's a guilty pleasure of mine. And honestly, I don't know why I didn't start doing it sooner. Yes, it's queuing as a Cat. (Argh, the more I look at the word 'queue' and 'queuing', the weirder it looks, and I keep thinking that I'm spelling it wrong.)


But there are problems with Cat DPS in heroics. Given the long start-up time required for our DPS to start rolling in, you really do have to change your priority list to do things well. Here's what I've been doing so far:

1. Rake if it isn't up already.
2. Savage Roar as soon as possible after engaging, even if you only have 1 point. Keep it up at all times.
3. If there are 3 or more mobs within your 180 degree frontal cone, Swipe. Even if you bottom out on Energy, you still do more damage-per-energy with one Swipe than with a mangle on each mob.
4. Mangle to build CP.
5. If a mob is going to cast a WTFtanksplode, Maim it.
6. If a mob is not going to last much longer, and you have 3 to 4 CP, Savage Roar and switch.
7. Ferocious Bite, and always on a bleeding target.
8. If you bottom out on Energy, and your Nature's Grasp is ready, use it to give yourself an extra shot at an OoC proc.

Now, I don't claim to be a priority theorycrafter, but this seems to be working well when doing heroics. I might need to tweak it here and there, but this seems to be working well enough.

-BearTreeCat

Mangle experiment results:

Quick post, because I *really* don't want to write about the Cataclysm stuff. Really, I don't. Matter of fact, I'm sick and tired of it all.

Largely because one, everyone has pretty much beaten it all to death, but also:

• I know that Blizzard is still going to be changing more than they just told us
• Blizzard told us stuff, without actually telling us stuff, so any theorycrafting is utterly useless.
• I believe that Blizzard has some seriously intelligent minds working on game design.
• I am very laid-back. Do *not* harsh my chill.

So I'm going to talk about Glyph of Mangle, instead.

A week ago, after tanking 25-man Deathbringer, I forgot to replace my Glyph of Mangle with Glyph of Maul. And I kind of have been too lazy to fix that. That being said, I seriously have not missed it at all. Single-target tanking only benefits from the 10% damage boost to Mangle, Boss + Add situations also benefit during Berserk, and large-pull tanking still seems to be just fine. I mean, I already tab around with my Swipe + Maul macro, like a Cleave-spamming Warrior, it wasn't a stretch to have to do it for extra targets. Just spam Swipe until Maul hits (look for the Infected Wounds debuff to show up), tab to the next, throw out a Mangle if it's up, or wait for the next Maul, tab to the next, and so on and so forth.

And my PVP performance certainly hasn't hurt either. Since I don't Shred, (positioning behind during battles royale is something that I am so woefully incompetent at) I mangle, and the 10% extra damage is wonderful too.

So I'll say this. If you are really intent on Hybrid-ing, you cannot go wrong with a Glyph of Mangle.

-BearTreeCat

On Glyphs: Tree Edition

Hey, the blog *is* called Bear-y Leafy, y'know.

The biggest reason why I'm tackling this topic now, is because I recently had a very abrupt and severe jolt when I upgraded from 4pT9 to 2pT10. It was a fairly easy thing to do, since for some bloody reason, I managed to get into two VoAs without a single Tree, nay, a single druid in sight. So where do the Lasherweave Gauntlets and the Sanctified Lasherweave Legplates go? Yeah, me. So now I'm rocking 3pT10 for my tanking set, and 2pT10 for my healyset.

Or was, up until Tuesday.

The weekly raid was Malygos, and, since I usually crank out the HoTs.... my numbers sucked. I mean, they REALLY sucked. Malygos phase 1 is usually heaven for Trees, just stand in place, and throw instant heals. Whirlwind? Peh, just HoT everything, and by the time everyone lands, everyone is pretty much at or close to full HP. Phase 2? Breath? What breath? But the other healer pulled me aside and told me my numbers were stinking, and so I re-equipped the T9 gloves in the meantime. It's obvious that I'm going to need to make some adjustments if I want to keep my raidgroup up on its feet. And I hate the feeling that I might be the one responsible for the group wiping.

So here's my current setup: I've got Glyph of Swiftmend, Glyph of Nourish, and Glyph of Wild Growth.

Swiftmend is almost required. There's nothing worse than gobbling valuable HoTs when you try to give someone a shot in the arm.

Nourish, I am actually considering dropping, since I don't do much tank healing. Most of the time, it's just the strict 5 Rejuvenates - 1 Wild Growth rotation for me.

Wild Growth is also a candidate for being dropped as well. Ish. It's impact is difficult to gauge, given that you may not always find the fifth or sixth target when dropping it, especially either in 10-man content, or in fights where everyone has to spread out, a la Deathbringer.

If I want to roll with the 2pT10 bonus, maybe I'll have to swap either Nourish or Wild Growth out for Rapid Rejuvenation or Rejuvenation, but probably Rapid Rejuvenation, since that effect is useful no matter what level of HP the target is at.
Now, Wild Growth in and of itself might not always connect with every single HoT,

On Glyphs: Bear Edition

Woot for me, I picked up a Battered Hilt for roughly 8.8k in barter today. I'm very pleased with myself. I am going to love the hell out of the resulting Lightborn Spire, because my threat has been lagging severely, what with being stuck first with Marrowstrike all through ToC and then with the Orca-Hunter's Harpoon up until now. I'll not divulge my secret sales methods (which, by definition, are a secret, =D) but I will touch on glyph choices.

Now, like all good Bears, I glyphed my Maul. And like all good Bears, I ran into the problem where I had to unglyph it to tank Deathbringer without wiping the raid. It was a fairly easy thing to do, since I usually run with a Growl, Survival Instincts, and Maul, I dropped the Maul for a Frenzied Regeneration. (I *refuse* to work with a taunt that can miss in general, but especially on Deathbringer.) I didn't reglyph after the run, and frankly, completely forgot to reglyph again the following day, beating the tar out of Onyxia. (I mean, come on, I'm usually on Whelp tanking duty. Maul ain't helpin' THAT much there.)

But what came after was a bit of a disturbance. When doing my usual once-daily Heroic for the Emblems of Frost, I really found out just how much of my threat really is wrapped up in that one Glyph. Trash packs that were usually manageable without so much as a how-do-you-do were suddenly a lot more challenging, requiring Warrior-like tabbing around to make sure everything was suffering equally. I am rather ashamed to say that on the first pull of three Iron Dwarves and two Iron Golems in Halls of Stone, the healer and two DPS bit it. (Although I do note that the Frost Mage in the group was running Ice Armor the entire time, rooting the golems that would charge him in place, which would inevitably turn and beat on the thing closest to them, usually the healer.)

Long story short, I had to take that dungeon a lot more carefully, only going 3rd gear, instead of "ravening-hellbeast-furballrocket" gear, although the constant Tricks and Fan of Knives spam from the rogue probably helped a lot. (God bless you, whoever you are.)

But afterwards, I hit up the auction house to reglyph Maul back into my usual setup. Now, understand, what Elitist Jerks says is all fine and dandy... but Kirin Tor is kind of a laid back server. Progression-wise, we kind of only JUST had someone do a Realm First: Algalon achievethingummy about a month ago. My 10-man and 25-man groups are not uber-leet groups trying to get the Realm First achievements. So yeah, carrying around a stack of glyphs and swapping them out as the fight demands is a bit of a foreign concept to my groups, but I can recognize the rationale when the argument for it is presented to me.

But when the time came to reglyph, a thought hit me: Was Glyphing SI really the best choice? Would I get better mileage out of glyphing FR instead?

So here's the math:

Raidbuffed, I sit at about 50K HP.
Survival Instincts increases your max HP by 30%, while your actual percentage of health remains unchanged. (Yes, your current HP does go up to match the original percentage before going big and red)
Glyph of Survival Instincts makes SI increase your max HP by 45% instead.
Frenzied Regeneration, assuming you don't get ragestarved, will convert 100 rage into a HoT for 30% of your max HP.
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration, again, assuming you don't get ragestarved, will convert 100 rage into a HoT for 36% of your max HP.

So:

unglyphed Frenzied Regeneration: 15000 healed
unglyphed Frenzied Regeneration + unglyphed Survival Instincts: 19500
unglyphed Frenzied Regeneration + glyphed Survival Instincts: 21750
glyphed Frenzied Regeneration + unglyphed Survival Instincts: 23400
glyphed Frenzied Regeneration + glyphed Survival Instincts: 26100


So it's clear. If you only have room for one, glyphing Frenzied Regeneration is best.

OR IS IT?!

Seriously, though, you and I know full well that there are varying flavors of Bear. I myself tend to favor a full-bear spec, but if you're a hybrid, you might want to take Survival Instincts anyhow. SI works in both Bear and Cat forms, unlike FR which only works in Bear. On the other hand, if you've taken up Herbalism Frenzied Regeneration might be more up your alley, since Lifebloom will get a boost out of the increased healing effect of the glyph as well. Of course, if you're a Cat primarily.... WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU READING THIS BLOG FOR, MAN?!

Me, I think I'm going to experiment with the two before making a final decision.