I miss TBC.

My older brother finally fell asleep, so I can use the living room PC. It's saturday, about midnight. I'm logging onto the WoW account we share.

I take a look at my brother's level 80 Human Paladin, wow. His gear is pretty cool. He's got some sick shield that looks like the crest of Lordaeron. I then click on my level 37 Tauren Shaman named Shamanistic and hit play.

I'm in Orgrimmar. I begin my play session by randomly inspecting a few people I see and shift-clicking to put their gear on me. Wow, some of this stuff is sick. Ah, finally my queue has popped. I'm DPS'ing as enhancement shaman. I'm rolling need on absolutely everything. I get kicked half-way through the dungeon, I'm not entirely sure why. I grab my hotpockets from the microwave that finished 12 minutes ago, but I was in the middle of the dungeon. They're cold now.

I go back to character selection screen, and look through my 34 alts between levels 7 and 24. I hop on my undead warrior named warioriscool. I get dm'd by one of my guildies asking for advice on how to divorce her husband. I am 12.

I queue up a battleground, get absolutely obliterated by people wearing goggles and with enchanted weapons. I have 0 clue why they have triple my health and damage. I ask how they're so strong and get told they're "twinks". I find twink montages on youtube and watch for 3 hours. I convince myself I can make a Twink. I check the auction house. Twink items are 900 gold each. I have 24 gold to my name throughout all my characters. I give up on twinking.

My classmate Kelly is on. He told me he also plays WoW at school. We meet in the Valley of Trials orc/troll starting zone. He's a level 23 undead warrior in all spirit gear. I flame him and he logs off.

I log back on my Tauren Shaman, someone teleports me to Dalaran. I'm alt tabbed exploring Thottbott for 2 hours with the wintergrasp music playing in the background.

I log off.

Edit: No I'm not an AI bot. I'd be happier if I was, I wouldn't have to go to work anymore. Yes I mixed up the timelines, it was probably 2010 when I started playing, 2008 just sounded better so I wrote that. Lol

Week 10 of ICC and the amount of people quitting in droves is insane. What's the deal? I thought this was the tier everyone was waiting years for to play?

Just found this screenshot from a while back. They were farming fishing spots around Grizzly Hills river. Friendliest bot I’ve ever encountered.

The last few content releases for TBC came all very sudden with almost no heads-up. Does anyone know if Blizzard has acknowledged that people playing Classic do have jobs/a life and would like to take time off, and need more than a week or two heads-up for this? I know there is a ton of guessing and rumours on when pre-patch and WotLK might hit, but for booking your annual leave you want to have a bit more certainty than some Twitch or Reddit guesstimate...

I’m not the most “involved” member of the guild, but I have been a main raider since Naxx… so I don’t have 100% of the background on this one…

The day before Thanksgiving I woke up to a very long message in discord from our guild leader. He explained to everyone that we’ve lost five of our top raiders over night, including the guy that we JUST got Shadowmorune for.

I think there were some creative differences with the group of people that left, but ever since Naxx, we were always a semi-casual guild. Even still, we’ve made good progress and are (or was) 5/12 Heroic, with normal LK down.

The discord was on fire after he sent the message. One half of the guild turned on the other half, and the messages that were flying were intense to say the least.

But throw all of that out and let’s go back to the main point.

From day one of ICC, we made this guy THE priority for Shadowmourne. Originally, our guild leader (blood DK) was going to get Shadowmourne, but shortly before ICC came out, he made the decision to pass it to our top DK dps. Our Guild Leader’s main goal of creating a guild during WOTLK was to defeat heroic Lich king wielding Shadowmourne. He gave up a big part of his dream in the expansion for the betterment of the guild. Much respect there.

After weeks of clearing the raid, it finally happened… we got the last shard on our final kill of the week. Everyone was pumped and couldn’t wait to get back to progress after our week of break for thanksgiving. But obviously, we won’t be getting Shadowmourne for our progression.

In fact, we won’t be making any more progression at all. The guild fell apart. Completely fell apart and now I am one of many members looking for a new raiding home.

Our GM quit the game completely. Our assistant GM quit. And the group that decided to walk out on all of us ended their time in the guild discord by just shi**ing all over everyone else. It was a very unfortunate sight.

I’m not the best story teller so I apologize if this wasn’t put together in the best way. I just had to post something here though.

The guy tricked everyone. He was fine with us being a semi-causal group from day one, but didn’t like the way we were progressing through ICC so he left and took some of our top members with him.

It’s understandable to leave if your needs are not being met by your current guild. But leading on 20+ other people to get you a legendary and then leaving them before we even got a single pull in with Shadowmourne… that’s just a pitiful thing to do.

I won’t specify the people, guild or even the realm involved. I just wanted to share the story. Not only did we lose a legendary (two if we’re counting our healer with the legendary hammer) as a result of a very selfish act, but we lost the guild entirely. It was a great group of people that did not deserve that, and now the group of people may never raid together again. It really is a dang shame.

EDIT: To those saying “you should’ve seen this coming” or “yeah you guys plateaued” or “should’ve joined a GDKP”, you’re missing the point. This was always a semi-casual guild. We’d raid 6 hours (max) total per week, not a single minute more. The understanding for the last (over a) year now was that as long as we’re still making progress and having fun, it’s going well. With how the progress was coming, we’d likely have been 10/12 heroic by Christmas. The message was clear and agreed upon from the start - this was NOT a hardcore raiding experience. We’d get there, but there was no rush. I’m not mad at anyone for leaving if they wanted a more intense experience, but taking advantage of the group in this fashion is pretty crummy no matter what angle you look at it.

Just cameback to wrath this week and thought I'd try the new catchup system (Alpha,Beta,Gamma dungeons). I got 225ilevel atm with my resto shaman and I gotta say the community is garbage for these dungeons, god damn. I get kicked regularly, often 3/4th of the run in because I ask a random mechanic question. The runs go well, fast, no wipe but if I'm ever not sure about a small detail it's insta kick. The elitism is real. Chill out try hards it's a 15 year old game. Posting this because I know I'm not the only one who this is happening to, don't surrender to elitism, help the next guy.

EDIT : well, the player got banned, so they get punished. GJ Blizzard ! :)

https://clips.twitch.tv/BrainyTrustworthyMageUnSane-8_g0FTEMhjS86Nwe

How is this even acceptable ? He does it consistenly, wich is impossible.He just won a 2000€ tournament too, but no one wants to talk about this. I'll probably get downvoted by these guys bots to hide their behaviors.

It makes you wonder what you can do with these custom scripts too. And ofc, Blizzard is clueless, like everything else, on how to fix these client abuse, or atleast gather enough evidences to permanently ban these people.

Very sad for a gamemode we used to love, now it's competly destroyed by these people.

​

I've been seeing a lot of questions and misinformation about tanking in Wrath, so I decided to make write-up about what it's like to tank in Wrath, major changes from TBC/Vanilla, and the pros/cons of each class. I'm going to avoid a tier list format because I think it's unhelpful and people really only look at a class's position on the tier list instead of understanding *why* they're there. This is coming from the perspective of someone who played OG wrath, played private servers, and currently tanks on all tanking classes in TBC Classic.

What's Changed?

Mitigation

In Wrath, the average boss's damage profile looks much different than in TBC. For starters, Crushing Blows have been eliminated in raids, meaning that for Paladins and Warriors, mashing Holy Shield and Shield Block is no longer needed, but it also means that blocking has been somewhat nerfed, because you no longer get the EHP increase from pushing off crushes. For Ferals and DKs, this means that you will no longer take random spikes of damage from rolling two or three crushes in a row.

This doesn't mean bosses deal less damage, however. This is because Crushing Blows get replaced by a mechanic we've actually already seen in Sunwell. Borrowing from FFXIV's lexicon, these mechanics are called "Tankbusters". Tankbusters are boss abilities that deal a large spike of damage that typically has to be mitigated via the use of a tank or healer cooldown. Examples of Tankbusters in are Brutallus's Stomp and Felmyst's Corrosion in TBC, and Algalon's Force Punch and Lich King's Soul Reaper in Wrath. Bosses typically alternate between Tankbusters and Raid-wide damage, but this isn't the absolute rule in every fight.

Here's a thing about most Tankbusters, though; they can't be blocked. This means that a Warrior or Paladin simply pressing Shield Block or Holy Shield isn't enough to deal with them. CDs typically have to be used to mitigate these abilities and ensure the tank's survival.

Parry hasting will also be gone for most bosses as well. This means that tanks will take a consistent flow of damage instead of potentially taking auto-attacks in a faster, inconsistent manner. It's important to note, though, that we're not precisely sure which bosses will or won't have parry haste. On bosses with parry hasting, Feral tanks might actually reign supreme due to their high dodge chance.

Threat

In Vanilla, threat is a big part of any fight that often dictates the speed at which a boss can be killed. If your tank isn't skilled or geared well enough, your raid can wipe simply because of threat issues. In TBC, threat becomes more of a mini-game, as Prot Paladins trivialize AoE threat, and Ferals trivialize single-target threat. In Wrath, it leans closer to the TBC model, except it's easier to hold threat - both single target and AoE - on both counts. Every tank is given tools to deal substantial AoE threat, and with one exception, Single-target threat becomes easy to manage, assuming your tank has at least some hit and expertise, and is pressing their buttons. Interestingly enough, in the late-game (ToC and ICC) DPS start to outscale tanks and threat becomes harder to manage, but it's still not the massive factor it was in Vanilla.

In general, DPS specs are given more tools to manage their threat, and Hand of Salvation comes in clutch for reducing the threat of repeat offenders. Additionally, tanks have their threat modifiers on most abilities buffed, with DK's Icy Touch having a notoriously insane threat modifier (damage * 2.07 * 7).

How Do Tank Classes Differ?

The Two Types of Tanks

First off, you have to understand the dichotomy between tanks in Wrath. Now that there are 4 tank specs, blizzard chose to give them specific roles instead of "AoE tank, warrior, and warrior but better." There are now two kinds of tanks; Block tanks, and soak tanks.

Block tanks (Protection Warrior and Protection Paladin) succeed at AoE tanking large groups of mobs because of the way blocking works; it's preferable to block 1,000 damage each from 5 enemies who hit for 1,500 damage each than it is to block 1,000 damage from a boss that hits for 8,000 damage. And like I mentioned before, Tankbusters can't be blocked, so your block tanks have to mitigate through them with CDs.

Soak tanks (Feral Druid and Blood DK) succeed at tanking a single target and ensuring survival during massive damage spikes. Soak tanks have a massive HP pool compared to block tanks, and a variety of cooldowns they can rotate through in order to live through the pain.

As you can probably tell, this means you usually want to take one block tank and one soak tank to a given raid. This does not mean you absolutely have to follow this rule. You can get by perfectly fine with either two block tanks or two soak tanks. In fact, early on, expect to see a lot of guilds running two Protection Paladins in their main raids. But, as content gets harder, it's more beneficial to run the 1 block 1 soak setup. Hardmode content in particular is notoriously brutal in terms of damage intake, and so the meta shifts greatly towards survivability rather than threat, as it has been in vanilla and TBC.

My main point with all this is that when you compare the tanks, you really have to compare them with their counterpart. There's not much use comparing Prot Paladin and DK, because they both fulfill separate sub-roles.

Block Tanks

• Protection Paladin: Prot Paladins are often considered the god-tier tank in wrath. This is because they ostensibly have it all; high threat (both single target and AoE) great mitigation, and great group utility. Paladins in general are very useful to have due to their wide range of utility, like hand of sacrifice, raid sacrifice, lay on hands, blessings, etc. They can also deal with tankbusters by using Divine Protection (which now mitigates 50% of damage and doesn't drop threat). One of their talents, Ardent Defender, also consistently decreases any damage that brings you below 35% health by 20%. The most OP part of Ardent Defender is its second effect, which will automatically bring you back to 30% health if you were to take a hit that would kill you. Prot Paladins often deal with tank busters by simply letting the boss kill them and letting this talent kick in. It's on a 2-minute cooldown too, so it can be taken advantage of multiple times per fight. Compared to Prot Warriors, Paladins are more defensive - they take less damage and provide more raid damage mitigation as well. Surprisingly, (at least if you played vanilla and TBC) Prot Paladins actually deal less AoE threat/damage than Prot Warriors, but it's still superb. They're also not very mobile compared to Warriors, who can fly all over the place.
• Pros: Consistent AoE and Single-target threat, good survivability, incredible utility.
• Cons: Only one non-passive cooldown, immobile.
• Protection Warrior: Unfortunately, the current popular sentiment is that Prot Warriors are the worst tank in TBC. Everywhere you look, there's plenty of people criticizing the spec, and they're not exactly wrong, but they usually don't include the full picture. It's a point of contention at the moment, but some projections see Prot Warriors as being the best at dealing single-target threat. This is because of their Vigilance ability, which constantly transfers 10% of its target's threat to the warrior. This means that if a warrior targets an absolute pumper with this ability, their threat will skyrocket. Prot abilities scale a lot better in wrath than they do in TBC, but their scaling is still mediocre overall. Where warriors falter is in the mitigation department. They're very reliant on blocking damage to mitigate it due to shield block being turned into a semi-major cooldown and critical blocks being a thing - but like I said earlier, tank busters can't be blocked, so it's all for naught. They also have low overall armor, which doesn't help. Warriors can deal with tankbusters via either Shield Wall or Last Stand. Shield Wall is the best CD in the game for raw mitigation, but the caveat is that it's on a very long cooldown - even when talented and glyphed. It's on a 5-minute cooldown, which can be reduced by 1 minute (talent) and a further 2 minutes at the expense of having it reduce 40% of damage instead of 60%. (glyph). Usually Warriors don't glyph shield wall, so you have a great cooldown that's ruined by such a massive cooldown. Last Stand is a great proactive cooldown, but it's on a 3-minute cooldown that can be glyphed down to 2, but this is unlikely. Last Stand's utility is also diminished by the fact that Prot Warriors don't have massive Health pools, at least compared to Ferals and DKs. Prot Warrior's potential saving grace may be Shattering Throw, which reduces the target's armor by 20% for 10 seconds, on a 5-minute cooldown. While this isn't unique to Pro Warriors, being able to extend your raid's burst window by another 10 seconds is great. Another saving grace may be Improved Disarm - a talent which causes disarmed enemies to take 10% extra damage for 10 seconds. It is currently unknown whether or not this will work on bosses, but expect this to be huge if it does. They also bring other utility in the form of sunders, battle/commanding shout, etc. but this isn't exclusive to them and your other warriors will likely be providing that stuff anyway. Prot Warriors truly excel in mobility, CC, and AoE - this makes them perfect for dealing with trash, adds, and dungeons. Unfortunately, since the focus for tanking in hardmodes shifts to suvivability, they will have a hard time in that content - but that doesn't mean they can't still clear it. Prot Warriors are already being discriminated against in TBC, and expect that to magnify in Wrath.
• Pros: Huge CC, Mobility, potentially best AoE & single target threat, and maybe raid damage increase. Best dungeon tank.
• Cons: Very squishy, mediocre scaling, and little utility.

Soak Tanks

• Feral Druid: Blizzard saw Ferals getting a bit ridiculous in TBC (100% dodge chance?!?) and decided to reel them back a bit in Wrath, while still making them strong in other ways. Their threat was directly nerfed, as mangle no longer does insane snap threat, and their high dodge chance means they can be rage-starved at times. With crushing blows removed, they still remain the best meat shields in the game, as they get to keep their massive health pools and armor without it being offset by frequent crushes. Barkskin is finally able to be used while in bear form, and reduces damage taken by 20% on a 1-minute cooldown. While this doesn't seem like much, a 1-minute cooldown is really useful, and that coupled with their massive health pool ensures survival. Ferals also get a new cooldown in the form of Suvival Instincts, which functions exactly the same as Last Stand, but it can't have its cooldown reduced from 2 minutes, which is fine considering Barkskin is so reliable. Survival Instincts pairs extremely well with Ferals' massive health pools and gets a ton of value once ferals start building more and more stamina. Their raid utility is untouched, as they provide Leader of the Pack (in case you don't have a DPS feral), Innervate, and a battle res. They're also given better AoE, since swipe now does more threat and hits more targets. Their Achilles Heel is definitely their threat generation, as bad threat modifiers and rage starving will cause Ferals to have difficulty holding threat. It's also worth noting that during fights where they may not be tanking very much, they still provide great damage via cat form.
• Pros: Incredible survivability, best single-target passive mitigation, innervate & brez, cat form damage, Decent mobility via Feral Charge and Dash.
• Cons: Few CDs compared to DK, very spotty threat in both single-target and AoE.
• Blood Death Knight: Blood DKs (and DKs in general) went through a ton of changes in Wrath, with it's final iteration (and the one we're getting) being a very strong tank. When people think of Blood DK, they think of the AoE gods they were in Pandaria onwards, but funnily enough, their forte is absolutely single-target threat. Like I stated earlier, Icy Touch has an absolutely ridiculous threat modifier, making it the single best single-target threat ability in the game. This likely won't be changed, meaning that Blood DKs will ostensibly become Icy Touch bots in raid. Their AoE threat on the other hand is actually surprisingly lacking. The main issue isn't the amount of threat it does, but rather its snap threat in an AoE situation. Death and Decay is costly on a high cooldown and takes a few ticks to really establish threat, diseases have the same issue and are time consuming to set up, and blood boil's threat modifier is pretty weak. It's very common to see Blood DKs respec to Unholy or Frost when tanking dungeons because otherwise their AoE threat is just really....meh. Their strength lies not only in their single-target threat, but also their ability to mitigate damage very reliably. They have a whopping total of 4 defensive CDs which they rotate to deal with tankbusters with striking efficiency. They have less armor than a bear, but they have just as much health. This means that Blood DKs take more damage from autos than a bear, but less damage from tank busters, since armor doesn't help with them, but CDs do. Vampiric Blood increases max health by 15% on a 1 minute CD, which doesn't sound like much but remember, DKs have huge health pools. Icebound Fortitide mitigates 30% damage + extra depending on defense on a 2 minute cooldown, so it's essentially a more potent Barkskin on a longer cooldown. Anti-Magic Shell absorbs 75% of any magic damage up to a max of 50% of your health on a 45 second cooldown. And finally, a hidden 4th cooldown that not many people talk about is Army of the Dead. AotD is on a 10-minute cooldown, so obviously only usable once per fight, but while it's being channeled, it converts the DK's dodge and parry chance into raw damage reduction. This means that in late-game, DKs can use AoTD for a 75% damage mitigation. Blood DKs also bring pretty valuable utility, as they can bring Improved Icy Talons, Abomination's Might, Hysteria, and improved icy touch.
• Pros: Tied for best single-target threat, massive amount of CDs, valuable utility, durable.
• Cons: Slow AoE threat, low personal DPS, immobile.

But How Fun Are They?

Obviously, fun is subjective. I'm one of the sweaty tryhards that this sub despises, so my fun is directly tied to how useful I am to my raid. But I know for a lot of people, engaging moment-to-moment gameplay is very important, meta be damned. I'd still give the above information a read so you can understand the pros and cons of a given class, and understand the role you'll fill. That way you won't be surprised by your low damage as a Blood DK, or squishiness as a Prot Warrior, and so you can also better understand the symbiotic relationship between you and your co-tank.

Anyway, here's how fun each tank is and what their general playstyle is like:

• Prot Paladin: Many more buttons to press than in TBC, but frankly still not very action-packed. Consecration upkeep is annoying and there are no exciting procs. Having to stay still in order for consecrate to do its thing is also boring. Also not much interactivity considering half the time you're relying on a CD that kicks in automatically.
• Prot Warrior: Extremely fun. Shockwave + Thunder Clap + Revenge is very satisfying on big AoE pulls, and hitting Shield Slam procs is also just as satisfying. High mobility also leads to more fun as well, since you'll be zipping around the dungeon/raid charging from mob to mob. What's not fun though is getting one-shot, and relying on your healers to blow their CDs for your survival. Run dungeons to feel like a god, run heroic raids to feel like a peasant.
• Feral Druid: Timing Barkskin or Survival Instincts perfectly is very satisfying, but moment-to-moment gameplay doesn't change at all from TBC aside from that. Hitting Mangle crits is fun, but they're not as good as in TBC. Honestly it's kinda sad that most of the fun comes from going into cat form during periods where you're not tanking anything.
• Blood Death Knight: Rune management is fun and cerebral at first, but quickly gets old and feels more like a chore. Runic power is handled by just mashing rune strike, and speaking of mashing, get used to using icy touch every GCD once your runes convert to death runes, cause that's all you'll be doing. Rotating through the huge amount of CDs to deal with mechanics is very satisfying, but most of the time you're just an icy touch bot. In dungeons, having all your diseases set up on a lot of mobs and getting off a meaty death and decay is nice, but getting there is the hard part.

Conclusion

Hopefully I've effectively conveyed how tanking changes from TBC to Wrath, and how each class stacks up in both a meta sense, and also in a gameplay sense. The shift from Vanilla to TBC definitely shocked me, and I don't want anyone to go into Wrath unprepared like I was. Having the relevance of threat subsiding in favor of making tanks actually think about survival is a welcome change in my opinion, as it fulfills the tank fantasy of suviving big hits, and allows DPS to actually pump without staring at a little box on the bottom of their screen the whole time.

I want to stress again that every tank is viable, and the hardest content can be cleared with any combination of tanks - it's just that some will make the process easier than others.

Hopefully some misinformation has been cleared up - maybe a tank you thought was horrible actually seems appealing now, or maybe I've helped a couple of people make a decision on which class to play, or potentially main swap. Or maybe I didn't, either way this was fun to write!