Happy BoE Tanking items, Drak’tharon Keep and BBBs facepalm moment

So anyone who’s been reading the blog lately knows I went Prot for Wrath. Grinding, questing and instancing are super fun. The wife is happy she gets to hit on the mobs some if we are questing together too.

My gear for tanking was some nice blues and half t4 with some crafted pieces when I started Wrath. However, I usually tanked in my arena/pvp gear for Utgarde when I went from 70-71. I was really hoping for upgrades to my tanking gear from the instances. Guess what!? There isn’t much from 70-75 in the instances. Every time I search for something off of the boss loot in wowwiki, I’d be kinda bummed at how little tanking gear there was.

Then I started leveling blacksmithing. Lo and behold, all the tanking gear is there! Did I drop BS off the dwarf to do double gathering?! I did! /facepalm! It’s ok tho! The items are BoE even the blue ones! Also, the blue ones you can make are THE tanking gear. I noticed this last night when I did Draktharon Keep. They have a pair of tanking pants in there that are not anywhere near as happy as my crafted tanking pants. I think, going off memory here, that there is at least a 22 stamina difference.

Also, with the blacksmithing, I can add gem slots to my gloves and bracers when I got the BS over 400. Slapped on some +12 sta gems… WHAT?! I was not an endgame raider last xpac. I don’t have gobs of the 15 ones chilling in the bank. Anyways, Herk is up to just under 18k for HP unbuffed. Replaced my Blazefury with the new 1h Blue Crafted tanking sword. (You really will have to excuse the lack of names as I am at work and have NO access to the item names.)

Overall I am very pleased with how accessible the tanking gear is. Tanks are still in demand since every single Deathknight I know is DPS. About 2/3 of the warriors I group with are Fury. Druids are, swear to all that is, all Balance and Pallys are all Ret. I did see a holy pally the other day though!

Drak’ Tharon keep was fun! Man am I loving all the new instances. Here’s a little trick for all you pugging tanks out there. There is a caster that looks like Kel’ Thuzad that shields himself when aggroed. His name escapes me. Surprised? Well, he summons mobs and you have to kill 4 crystal handlers before his shield goes down. This is an endurance fight. The problem comes in when you notice most of the mobs summoned are not elite. Not elite gives your party the impression that they can solo like they are questing. Don’t do it!

They absolute best place to tank the adds, since they come from both sides, is in the corner to you front left when you walk into the room. Plant your party there with your healer and you stand out front. All adds have to go through you before getting to them no matter if they come from the left or the right. It seemed really simply to me the next time I saw the layout and after some “gentle” rearrangement of pissing order for the group, they went and stood where I asked. It worked like a dream! We destroyed that boss.

BBB’s facepalm moment

I am running Utgarde with the same priest for the 3rd time and he is looking for a blue dagger off the first guy. We have a shammy running with us who is healing. The priest is Shadow. Now the priest and I had a good thing going until the dagger dropped and the Shammy rolled and won it. The priest lost his mind. Screaming it wasn’t a Shammy dagger. Then he kept /w me. /w Herk That stupid shammy. He is in outland greens! I could have used that so much more. My gear is from Kara and ZA and that would have boosted me over 1200 spellpower. I hate that guy. Sidegrade for spirit Vs True Upgrade for the healer? /facepalm