Boxes and boxes of carefully sorted, collected, plastic wrapped and backboarded issues resided safely in his home.

Along came a day when it was time to get on a bus, and leave his old world behind, to take that first step towards Parris Island. He didn’t know a whole hell of a lot about what was ahead, but e had a fairly good idea of one thing; it would probably pay to travel light.

Towards that end, he decided to put away childish things, and gave everything away to his high school friends. Books, comics, role playing gear, everything. 

It was a symbolic act of turning his thoughts away from the detritus of the past, and instead looking only towards the future, and what he could make of it.

Yeah, that kind of thinking doesn’t last very long in the real world.

The truth is, we are the sum total of all of our experiences and knowledge, and for good or bad, everything we do is part of who we are.

I may not have had any comic books, but the part of me that liked good stories wrapped up in fancy art hadn’t gone anywhere.

What did happen was that my tastes in comic books, in media of all types, broadened quite a bit. I’d like to think I’ve grown more appreciative of rich stories, of well woven plots, of intricate tales and blunt emotion and many other things besides.

Of course, while I’d like to think that, I’m probably fooling myself. :)

These days, I rarely purchase comic books of any type, but through the magic of the public library system, I can request and read all the very latest comic book graphic novels, whenever I wish.

Yes, even rather graphic graphic novels, like The Ultimates, Powers, and Wanted. Right there on the racks. Kinda scary, isn’t it?

I still manage to read a lot of funny books, is what I’m saying.

In all the years I have read comics, through Watchmen, Chris Claremonts run on X-Men, The Dark Knight and Sin City, Groo the Wanderer and Cerebus the Aardvark, Badger and Nexus, Batman and What If and Beyonders and The Ultimates and all sorts of things, of WildCATS and Supremes, even through Mage: The Hero Discovered and the aforementioned Powers, nothing I had ever read could prepare me for how I felt when I first opened that issue and read that first story.

Planetary.

A simple enough comic, by a writer I was vaguely aware of as some crazy Brit named Warren Ellis.

I was predisposed to expect genius from crazy Brits, since Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is like, freaking genius of the first water and once upon a time influenced me in spending hundreds of dollars on overpriced graphic novels to possess the entire run of his work. Damn it.

Still, not even Gaiman could prepare me for Planetary.

So simple. So unassuming. No pretensions towards artsy fartsyness like the faux shadowboxes of the Sandman covers. No oversized issues, or foil imprints, or sales hype wackiness.

Just a comic.

But what a comic.

The artwork… I fell in love with John Cassaday’s style early on.

And the book!

The tagline: “Archeaologists of the Unknown”. The recurring theme: “The world is strange; let’s keep it that way.”

The idea that these aren’t action heroes in the beat ‘em up sense, in the “Let’s see what happens if Hulk fought Wolverine” style of comic plotting.

Seriously. That was often the plot in the old days, and people blame Watchmen and Dark Knight for many things, but give credit where it’s due, we haven’t had to deal with bullshit epeen contests superheroes fulfilling adolescent power fantasies in a long, long time.

“Let’s see what would happen if Captain America fought Spiderman. Why would they fight? Who cares, let’s give the fans a fight so we can see who would beat who. And Spiderman is up in the ratings, so we can’t let him lose.”

Here, the plot was not an afterthought thrown together to give the characters something to do while we admired their powers. The plot… the plot was incredible.

The stories are so rich. Each issue explored major themes, powerful ideas, and opens eyes on a wild and strange and fascinating secret history of a world that so easily could be ours… and which, in some way, we truly wish was.

The characters are really in love with the world. With it’s strange cultures, and it’s diverse paths and ideas and all the hidden mysteries that are in the cracks, where the daily struggle for life and health and family push the extra weirdness aside, to be left forgotten along the way.

I came to the story late. Most of the comics were already out, and I had to go back and meticulously hunt down each one, sometimes in collected graphic novels, and other times as individual issues, to finally forge a full set.

The story… it is so like the work of J.Michael Strazynski on Babylon 5 (and Rising Stars), in that it is clear that, while each issue has one brilliant concept that is heavily explored, the entire series is also telling one consistent, powerful story with a discrete beginning, middle, and most particularly, an ending.

Even more amazing, as each issue is read and re-read, it becomes clear that every issue, often with seemingly contradictory themes or science or views of the world from different points of view, actually do go together to further every bit of the story with critical knowledge. There are no throwaways. If you thought one was a throwaway, then I bet it pays to go back later and read it again. You might have missed something in the theme.

And finally, the most amazing thing about the entire series; it’s full of exciting action, smart damn action, and it’s cool. It’s very, very cool.

The secret history of the world.

A world filled with Sherlock Holmes, and Dracula, and Doc Savage. Or the island of monsters from King Kong. Or aboriginal concepts of the dreamtime. Or the multiverse. Parallel worlds. Nick Fury and Frankenstein Monster. And every possible thing in between. All cohesive and exciting and relevant.

A world truly filled with infinite possibility.

A world filled with endless hope.

Art the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere else, etherial when it needs to be, stunning and beautiful, and then clean and cold, or warm and loving, and at all times, alive and full. John Cassaday is a marvel.

Okay. So, I love Planetary. Fine.

Why in all the nine hells am I boring you to death with my drivel?

Give me a second, I’ll get to it.

This series has had a very strange, very staggered run.

Perhaps it’s true that you can’t rush genius. Or maybe Warren Ellis just needs to ease up on the projects that grow like bunnies and finish one. Whatever.

I’ll just say that Planetary spans 27 issues. The first one went on sale sometime in 1998… and the last published issue, issue #27, went out on October of 2009.

That’s right. A run of 27 issues over 11 years. /cry

But there was worse. Once you got into it, and went to collect old back issues, you found out one horrible fact; the collected graphic novels ended at issue #18.

And issue #19 went on eBay for over $70, assuming you were lucky enough to find one.

So you could get the entire series on graphic novel form easy enough up to 18, and then had to make some hard choices. And even then, for years there was no final issue #26 or 27. Years.

Again, why am I going over all of this?

I’ll tell you why.

At long last, you can get the entire thing in graphic novel form.

Volume 4 of the collected editions of Planetary, including rare issue #19, went on sale on March 4th of this year.

I’m holding it in my hands. It’s real. I could hug it. 

It’s beautiful.

It’s kind of like holding warm, summery sunshine. Or the freshness of your newborn child, without the impending diaper load or months of sleepless nights lurking ahead.

It holds issue 19, all the way through 27, and fully and completely concludes what I strongly consider to be one of the greatest science fiction stories ever told, anywhere, in any possible form, and certainly in my opinion THE greatest comic book achievement of all time.

If you happen to enjoy science fiction and have a fairly well read and wild appreciation for the richness and diversity of pulp myths and classic storylines and new concepts, and above all else enjoy good comic books, and if it lies at all within your power to read these four volumes, whether from your library system or by purchasing them, I beg of you, do it.

You might not agree with this gushing fanboy about how good they are… but I can’t believe that you would be dissappointed.

For your convenience, I shall now link to all four volumes on Amazon.com, so you can find them by ISBN if you want to check with your library. Or if you want to purchase them.

And the obligatory disclaimer… I don’t get a dime whether you buy one or not. I get no deal with Amazon when I link to them, I do it because I find it convenient to buy from them. No hidden motives.

One last thing… there is so much about this that is amazing and I cannot in good conscience ruin things for you by talking too much about it. But if you ever enjoyed ANY pulp stories, like Doc Savage or The Shadow, or Tarzan, or John Carter of Mars, that era of fiction has its treasured place in the huge all encompassing world of this series. You don’t have to know about any of it to appreciate it; but it certainly does broaden the entire experience.

As a long confirmed fan of Doc Savage, and an occasional reader of all the others, I was quite pleased.

Planetary 1: All Over the World and Other Stories (collects preview & 1-6) 
Planetary 2: The Fourth Man (collects 7-12) 
Planetary 3: Leaving the 20th Century (collects 13-18) 
Planetary 4: Spacetime Archaeology (collects 19-27)

That’s really it.

There are two other ways to collect it all coming soon, called Absolute versions.

Absolute Planetary 1 is already out, holding the preview, 1 through 12 and extra stuff.

Absolute Planetary 2 is due out in July of this year, and holds 13 through 27. I mention this, because pre-orders say that the Absolute Planetary 2 might have some extra pages of a mini-story included not seen elsewhere. On the other hand, that hasn’t been confirmed anywhere I have seen… and it’s damn expensive, and it ain’t out yet. Hmm, go figure.

Yes, that’s a hint. The original line is from a movie. Here’s a second hint; it’s one of my favorite films of all time.

Now, on to the show!

A few nights ago I finally achieved my mini-goal of hitting 375 Enchanting on my Shaman, and so I no longer had any excuse not to play her.

I queued up once again as a Healer Shaman, and away I went into LFD.

All I wanted was a quick romp in the Heroic sack with some random PUG I picked up in a bar, but, as Ford Fairlane might have said, “I got the bonus plan.”

I got Drak’theron Keep, and in looking at the group composition (as I always do for Totem adjustment) I saw that three of the others in the group were all from the same guild. A Paladin, a Shaman, and a Shadow Priest.

Now, the first thing I did was laugh, and I mean really laugh at the name of this guild.

Get this; Prophet of Cthulhu.

Why did that get me chuckling? For the answer to that, may I refer you to this ancient post of mine, from May of 2008, wherin I plug John Ringo books, throw down the hate on Transformers, laugh about things that lots of people probably take very seriously, get insanely cranky… and way down at the bottom relate a true story concerning myself, some very serious true believers, and the great old ones of Lovecraftian lore.

Okay, so I’m laughing with the guild name of these three, and off we go.

First thing I do, as I said, is see that one of the three, Lardzilla, is a Enhancement Shaman, and I’m examining what Totems he’s dropping in the first coupe fights so I can set mine not to overlap. I also check to see what the Paladin did for buffs, all the things a Shaman has to do to make sure you drop the right Totems. And of course, I get my Tremor Totem set for later, when the fear, she be a flowing.

This causes me to lag a little behind, but I do my best to keep the heals flowing.

Then we get to some lizards, and I’ve got max skinning and seem to be the only skinner, so again, I’m lagging behind a little trying to get some skinning in.

All in all, I’m doing my best, but I’m certainly not feeling like I’m giving off the impression to the others of being bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and poised to let the heals flow.

We blow through the instance, everything is pretty nice, a few times the Paladin scoops up groups that are a bit larger than I’d certainly like, but some frantic healing and Nature’s Swiftness keep everything just fine.

We hit the end boss, finish him off, and I win the epic Mail healing bracers. Score!

I also ding the 25 Emblem achievement. :)

I thank the group for the run, and make the comment in passing that it does get hard gearing up a new alt all over again.

The Paladin, of all people, comments that he knows the feeling from his Druid.

I mention that at least I’ve got an idea about healing and some good toolslike Vuh’do thanks to my other healer, a Tree Druid, and the Paladin says he hates Vuh’do on his Tree Druid, he prefers Lifebloomer instead, an addon I’m not even sure I’ve heard of before.

Next thing I know, the Paladin says, “Hey, when did you ding?”

I tell him I just turned 80 on Saturday, and it’s been a lot of fun.

Next thing I see, he’s queued the four of us up for heroic Forge of Souls, and says, “Here, let’s get you some gear.”

Well… okay, this is an unprecedented level of niceness from three folks that I haven’t seen before. My healing sure as heck didn’t warrant this behavior.

What does that leave?

It couldn’t possibly be… nice people?

Hmmm.

The Paladin queues us up, and it won’t let him. Why? Because despite my efforts, I still don’t have the gear necessary to let me in.

So the Paladin laughs and queues us up for regular Forge of Souls, and away we go!

We did Forge of Souls, and Pit of Saron, back to back, and they were willing and ready to go do Halls of Reflection, if I hadn’t had to go get Alex ready for bed.

And a nicer bunch of people I haven’t seen in a PUG in a long, long time.

Knowing the fights, the enemy tactics, and the boss encounters from both a Paladin tank and Healer point of view helped immensely in making sure I was proactive in my healing rather than reacting in a panic.

And being familiar with Vuh’do and having studied my spells also helped a ton.

But mostly, I had a very well geared tank and a very powerful group of DPS that killed things before they had a chance to hurt anyone too much. :)

Earlier I mentioned an exploit. Mostly, I brought it up just to be able to use that movie quote in the title. :)

We did use an exploit I had never heard of before, in Pit of Saron, but it didn’t actually make my ass drag. OR make my butt slump.

What happened was, as soon as Ick and Krick were dead, the Paladin said, “Everyone mount up, we’re going to do the exploit.”

I had no idea what he meant, but I know what a mount is. I’m kinda crafty that way. I can haz hoofs!

Loot was taken, but even before the dialogue was over and Krick was dead, we were mounted up… and heading up the ramp.

We reached the top of the ramp just as the two shadowcasters appeared to head down, and they ignored us as we kept on going to the other side and stopped on that first landing halfway towards the tunnel, where it takes a dogleg 90° to the right. The two groups on the ramp spawned after those two reached their positions… and ignored us, safe at the top landing.

We only had the two groups of icicle guys and their minions to deal with before the tunnel.

I don’t mind the ramp, but I’ll admit, I wasn’t crying a river of alligator tears about avoiding that particular fight when I don’t know everyone I was with, and my healing power is a might on the low side just yet.

Anyway, we blasted through the whole thing, I was very careful of my healing during Overlord Brands, and I got the nice Mail healing chest piece, and of course emblems and stuff.

More than that, we chatted a bit during the run, and I really was amazed at how you can sometimes just bump into the nicest people.

Things like this really serve to highlight one lack which I wish Blizzard could remedy.

We already have an ignore list that works cross-server, and if you put somebody from another server on it, it prevents you from being queued with that person in a random again in the future.

That’s all well and good.

What I wish is that there was a cross-server friends list, where if you find yourself grouped with some really nice folks, you could exchange friends lists.

You put them on your list, they put you on theirs, and if the random generator sees two people who BOTH are on each other’s friends list, it matches them up together by preference, if possible.

Just a thought. It’s nice that we can prevent future occurances of playing with the same asshats, but I’d love it if we could increase the chance that we would play with great folks we’ve had fun with again.

So, to Khaotix, Karalov, and Lardzilla of Prophet of Cthulhu, thank you very much for being really nice people, and great players, and for being kind to a complete stranger in a pug.

Bravo. You all rock.

She was very impressed with the information, how it was arranged and how they attributed what source their information came from, and thought it would be a good place to bookmark while we wait for the final expansion release.

I know there are other places out there to find this as well, Cassie was just struck by how nice this was presented and how complete.

I’ve always been a personal fan of Wowhead, from the very first time they popped into the field. I think the professional layout, speed, attractive arrangement, the tools they’ve developed like the talent calculators and their willingness to provide silly tools like Tooltip addons for Bloggers (which I use gratefully), everything they do is of the utmost quality and usefulness.

Even if they never DID add my link to their “Bloggers who use Wowhead” page.

I’m sure everyone here is very familiar with Wowhead, but I think it’s hard to remember the old days when Thottbot or Allakhazam were our only sources for where an item could be found, or even what might be available to be crafted.

They were great tools, of course, wonderful databases carefully researched and documented… but they never seemed… professional. They were, much like my blog, projects that could be seen as coming from a fan rather than a skilled website design professional.

If you did play back then, in the time before Ten Ton Hammer, MMO Champion, Wowhead, okay I’ll say it, WoW.com… take a moment to contrast how it felt to play back then, with how these professional websites enhance the experience now.

I really do feel that these websites, and the skilled, artistic and mature touch they bring, helps to encourage the feeling that we are taking part in a hobby that can be respected as being the pastime of skilled, thoughtful, mature people.

A video game, no matter how popular or awesome, is usually only really known by the people who play it. Outsiders have no idea what we’re talking about.

With these websites, we have something we can point to and say, “This is representative of the game community, and it’s certainly not something knocked together by 6 year old script kiddies. Mock us for playing a game if that’s what tickles your fancy, but don’t pretend any idiot can master this or that it’s beneath you. Chances are good you’re not intelligent enough, flexible enough or dedicated enough in your life to handle ICC hard mode raiding, and you’d get owned in battlegrounds PvP, so shut it.”

And of course, it helps people who might be interested have a palce to go where they can find out more… and, okay, get scared by how damn complicated it all is.

Thus ends my little love letter to Wowhead. :)

There has to be a point to it, even if it was just “Well, it made ME laugh.”

Something that happened that was a fun story, something that happened that was out of the ordinary, something that happened that called to mind a topic of discussion many of us might learn from… if only to know what not to do.

And in thinking of blog posts as a teachable moment, thinking about what not to do and how to present it… my mind, inevitably, turned to evil.

A new reality TV show… “How Not to Tank”, with your host, BBB.

Yes, thats right, I felt struck with inspiration for a horrifying series of Youtube videos.

I could join a random pug, and then intentionally do something that tanks should never do, narrate it, and film the entire sequence… including the reactions of the unsuspecting party.

“Today, the Big Bear Butt will demonstrate what happens when a Bear tank tries to free himself from movement impairing effects during the 10 waves of trash in Heroic Halls of Reflection, by shifting out of and back into Bear form. Repeatedly. What will happen, and how will our unsuspecting party react? Let’s find out!”

Seriously, can you imagine how terrible that would be? To be on a run with unsuspecting, innocent folks and intentionally do stuff wrong or stupid, just to film their candid-camera type reactions and then post it?

I have achieved a new, galactic level style of asshattedness.

Even worse… the temptation to actually DO this, if only once, is strong. Now I know what is really meant by “Tempted by the power of the dark side.”

How has this concept not shown up as a regular reality show or on the internet yet?

Stay tuned next week, when our undercover main tank healer goes on strike with loud drama over Legendary item loot priorities right as the main tank pulls the last boss of a heroic Ulduar 25 run, and how the guild leadership reacts after the epic wipe, here, on “Wipe That Raid!”

I’m a sick, sick bear.

I certainly try and keep an open mind and look at things from different angles, but until I’ve been there, it’s hard to have specifics.

This time, I’ve got a few things that playing a new healer in heroics has brought to my attention that I thought would be fun to discuss.

First, I’m not really new to healing. I dual-specced my Druid quite a while back, got setup with Tree healing, and I love it. It is the absolute perfect accompaniment to the Bear tanking mindset; highly mobile, pre-emptive, heal them before they even know they needed it kind of healing.

As a Bear tank, one of our strengths is the mobile AoE. We like to run and gun. :)

As a Tree healer, our greatest strength (in my opinion) is the predominance of instant cast HoTs. We can also run and gun. We’re all about running and.. well, and leafing along. Why look… synergy.

As a Tank in instances, if I see I have a Tree healer, I know that I can remain mobile and healing can continue as normal. I’m not irritating the healer by always being on the move. I watch mana levels on the party as I pull, but I know that I won’t be leaving a swearing healer in my wake.

I’ve got a Priest that I had healed with a few times back in Burning Crusade before I went Shadow, so I know about that a little bit. And Cassie has a max level Paladin that she plays Ret and Holy in groups, and who has raid healed a few times, so I know a bit about that healing style from watching her and hearing her side of things. I know that being a healer whose main healing spells have relatively long cast times can be annoying, and even stressful if the tank doesn’t take that into account on things like Culling of Stratholme.

Now, I’ve just completed a slew of heroics as a new Shaman healer to give me a fresh perspective.

Here is the one suggestion I’d like to make when you go in to tank with an unknown healer; remember that not every healer uses instant cast spells.

Yes, every healer can follow along and keep up when tanks hustle through instances. Tree healers have an easier time of it than the others, but just taking the Shaman as an example, Lesser Healing Wave is pretty darn powerful, and with appropriate levels of haste on your gear, it’s relatively speedy. Riptide is a nice instant cast, and Nature’s Swiftness plus Chain Heal or Healing Wave gives you another big instant hit if things are moving fast and you just CAN’T take 2.5 seconds minus haste to get a normal Chain Heal off.

But the thing is, while all healing classes can heal on the run and do it very well, remember that there is a timing sequence here, and as has been pointed out by so many people, tanks set the pace of the run.

Everything flows from the tank. The tank runs fowards, the rest follow along. We’ll not linger overlong on DPS that run forward to attack before the tank does to hustle things along, okay? There is a special place in hell reserved just for them.

The tank runs forward, as I said, followed by the DPS who engage the mobs, followed by the healer, who catches up, stands still and remains poised to heal. Or immediately launches into healing and healing and healing.

If the healer has long cast time heals they want to use, they may begin pre-emptive casting, and then move at the last moment to interrupt their own heal so as not to waste mana.

Mana on a long cast is spent when the spell goes off, and not at the start of casting. As I’m sure everyone knows, you can begin casting your 2.5 second long heal while everyone is still at full at the start of the pull, and if the target just happens to take damage, you can let it go off looking like a healing genius… and if the target’s still at full, you can hop in place and break your own cast to save mana. No harm done, right?

I’m only bringing this up because if you, the tank, run up and grab mobs, then the DPS runs up and opens up on them, then the healer runs up and stops and begins casting… if the mobs are dead 2 seconds later and the tank takes off again, that 2.5 second cast time heal ain’t going off before your butt is out of range. At the very least, if everyone runs off the millisecond that the mobs are dead, and the mobs die like they have been from the uber-DPS people have these days, then sometimes not everyone is healed back up from party damage. Ya’all take off while the healer was still casting his second spell.

Now the healer has to start running again to catch up, not everyone is at full, and start falling back on super fast casts and instant casts only to try to get folks topped up before the next pause, or start out at a negative on the next group.

Does it matter? 90% of the time, no. But it can be stressful, and why should you stress the healer for nothing?

When it does matter is when the tank grabs tons of mobs because, oooh look, I’m a rock star, the DPS gleefully blows them up, and then the tank, at 50% health, Feral Charges himself directly at the next big pack, or packs, or even better rounds a corner and charges the boss when you were still trying to get your long cast off. 

Healers just love it when you start a boss fight when everyone is still at around 50% health or less, and the healer has been chain casting to catch up.

Again, it’s not a big deal, no reason to whine, most healers will be bored if you slow down too much.

There is a lot of satisfaction to be felt in running at top speed as a healer, keeping everyone alive and near full all the time without needing a pity break. It’s something the healers I know take pride in, in not needing everyone to be waiting around on the healer.

But it’s something to be aware of if you’re the tank, and the only thought in your mind is “Gotta get the aggro. The aggro. Gotta get the aggro.”*

You may be having a great time running around grabbing lots of stuff, and holding aggro, and having a fast run. The DPS may be loving the pace.

But the healer may just be feeling a little stressed having to chain cast long cast time spells non-stop, and not getting a moment to catch their breath because if they ain’t casting, they’re drinking for two seconds before getting up and running along after you again.

Really, all it takes is saying, ”Hey, if my pace is too fast, just let me know, okay? I can hold off for a second for mana or heals. No problem.”

I bet if you say that, then again, you’ll almost never hear anyone say anything. But at least the healer knows you give a shit.

And it can also help you identify asshat DPS that throw a hissyfit at the very idea you might pause for anything, anything at all. I like to know who they are for my ignore list. :)

For the record, I’m not going to post my Shaman’s name or a link just now, because while it’s not any big secret (or all that hard to figure out), my gear right now ain’t anything anyone needs to see.

I ran a bunch of heroics, but I took most of yesterday off to do something else; level Enchanting on my Shaman from 0 to 315, on my way to 350.

I got stopped by the need for a gazillion Arcane Dust, but since none of my gear had been enchanted yet after just dinging 80, I just cast them on myself over and over.

I really don’t need somebody following a character link, and then being an asshat because I’ve got a +1 Stam enchant on my bracers, or a Mana Prime on my chest piece, ya know? I’ve been buying the big ticket end game enchants on gear that’s going to last, like my Zom’s shield, but that’s about it.

Once my enchanting is done, yes I’m sure I’ll replace those enchants. If I was in all epics, then I might leave them just to freak people out, but when my gear is all starter stuff, I don’t have any room to have stupid enchants as a goof.

Anyway, I did have a lot of fun healing on my Shaman, and aside from my very first run, they were all smooth as could be. Well, aside from a Drak’theron Keep run, bt that was mostly due to some mid-run sillyness and joking. :)

It was pretty amazing, how much of a difference there is in a tank’s pace. A little pause between pulling big groups of just a second or two, no more, makes a huge difference on a healer with long cast times in staying on top of everything without feeling too rushed.

Halls of Lightning, Oculus a couple times, Utgardt Keep, Utgardt Pinnacle, Gundrak a few times, Drak’theron Keep… I saw a nice range of places, and they were all fun. None of them were any problem at all, but tank pace and placement counts for so much in making the difference between a fun run and a stressful one.

More updates will follow… after my Enchanting gets better. :)

*For those that remember those old Dunkin Donuts commercials with the old guy that walked around in a daze waking up to go and make the donuts… “Gotta make the donuts, the donuts, zzzz”

I arranged all my gear, set up my Glyphs and Vuh’do, got everything all set, and happily queued up for a random heroic. As a healer.

Lo and behold, I get for my first one, Utgardt Keep of course, thanks to the wonders of my not being all purpled out. :)

Went through, had fun, no problems at all. The recent articles in Totem Talk on WoW.com about Restoration Shamans have been very helpful in making sure I’ve got things straight.

After spending some time on other things today, I went ahead and logged back in for my second heroic as a healing Shaman.

This time, I get Oculus.

No problem, that’s not too bad. Sadly, my low gear score will mean squishy drake mounts, but everyone has to start somewhere, right?

Ah well… so much for my hopeful expectations. I found what can only be described as “situation normal, all selfished up”.

We went in, and the luck of the draw gave us a Bear tank with a really cute name, “Cutebearbutt”, and I thought, “Well, cool. With a name like that, it’s probably a pretty nice person playing. This ought to be neat to see someone else bear tank for a change.”

So much for having my judgment clouded by false expectations. You’d think I should know by now not to judge a player by the names they choose.

Although I stick by my practise of shunning any elven Hunter named a variation of Legolas. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, damnit.

Right off the bat, I get kept busy with spam heals, as the idiot mage blows stuff up with AoE outside the Bear’s range of Swipe, and takes massive damage from all the little whelps that, /shock, only pay attention to the one person doing threat to them. They sit there and shell him from a distance.

While I’m trying to nuke heal the Mage and keep him alive…. the Druid proceeds to keep on trucking, running all the way around and aggroing the entire ring. Of flying things. That she can’t keep aggro on. Many of whom she doesn’t even get a single tag on, since as soon as I start healing her, they’re all over MY ass from healer threat. And I can’t NOT heal her, because she’s taking massive damage and dropping like a stone. I gotta heal her and hope we get through this.

I keep her up, and me up, but with all the incoming damage on everyone, I can’t heal everyone else through it, and the Mage drops, then the Paladin, and then the Rogue and the rest of us follow. Honestly, I doubt my fully epicced-out Tree could have done any better.

I say, politely, that I’m a new healer, and I can’t handle healing through pulling quite that many mobs yet, and suggest that if that’s going to be a problem, I can step out so they can get someone else. I made sure I was very polite, and not snarky, because hey, I know how everyone is used to a high level of gear by now. If they want to run fast, I won’t get in the way, I’ll go look for a Nexus.

Tank quits the group without a word, followed by everyone else. Not a single word is said.

Not a “My bad for pulling a hundred whelps and leaving everyone else back there to fend for themselves and not bothering to actually establish aggro”, not a “oops, maybe I should have let the tank get aggro first” from the DPS, nothing.

Not a word. I entered the instance to retrieve my body alone.

Honestly, my first thought?

Screw you all very much, too. Screw you oh so very much.

My second thought WAS snarky; “Awwww, did’ums not have a healer to carry your asses through being stupid? Did’ums fear you might have to put forth some effort in playing properly?”

“Poor babies!”

Such are the moments of excitement and anticipation for newly dinged 80s in heroics.

I guess my meager 1500 spellpower unbuffed was a bad idea. Maybe I should go back and keep doing regular instances for a while. At least there, they don’t expect Icecrown raiders in all their pugs.

I think I’ll just put together a little drop list from regulars and see what happens.

Ah well… what did I expect, a welcome? Courtesy? Consideration for a new healer just getting started? Patience? ROFLMAO!

What am I smoking over here? Don’t I know it’s all about getting what each individual wants for themselves, and to hell with everyone else? 

Geez, what game did I think I was playing, anyway?

I was gonna talk about my crazy nutso kooky day, but what the hell… this question is about Bears, and the guy really hit the right chord with me, so I guess you folks that hate anything that isn’t about Druids on the blog win out.

This time.

Don’t push it. :)

Here is part of the email, from Stratus on the Darkspear server;

Hello Big Bear - 
 
Anyway – have a question for you.  Myself and another geared bear tank were discussing gemming.  I essentially stam stacked my gems.  Had some expertise in there because mine was so low, but would otherwise go +30 stamina gems – no matter what the color called for.  Anyway, he basically stated I was a moron.  I laughed of course (but inside I was like, damn, maybe I am a moron – lol). He went on to say by me stam gemming I am gaining health at the expense of damage mitigation.  True, I replied, but I am counting on my gear to do that.  I look at gemming for health power mainly.
 
I could not find any specific BBB blogs on this although you mention in one of your side articles about a blog on that – but I could not find.
 
Any words of wisdom or articles you could shove my way to look and ponder with regards to high level tank gemming?

Looking forward to your response whenever that may be.
 
Stratus, Darkspear

Thanks for the really nice email, Stratus. The whole thing was very nice, and I hope you’ll forgive me for just excerpting the parts relevant to your question.

The question about choosing between Stamina and Agility is a great one, because it touches on the part of the game where judgment intercedes against ’set in stone’ guides.

The short form answer to your question is, no, you are not a moron, because clearly you have given thought to your Bear and grasp the basics of mitigation (and I assume you’re lumping avoidance in with it) and health pools, but yes, you could be doing a little better in your gemming selection criteria.

Lemme ’splain.

As a Bear tank, when choosing between Stamina or Agility gems, you are making a choice between either a higher health cushion to eat the damage and last longer before healing is needed, or increased avoidance to do the “sidestep bear butt boogie” and avoid the damage entirely.

There is a fine line between having just enough health, and an overabundance of health as compared to Dodge.

Let’s start with increasing health. We’ll slip some Dodge tank in afterwards.

What your intent is with increasing health, is to have enough health to ensure that your healers are never drastically rushed in trying to get in that desperate last second heal to keep you from taking a dirt nap. When you increase your health pool, it appears that the more health you have, the more reaction time you are giving to the healer to respond to your incoming damage.

Healers these days are frequently responsible for healing the main tank, and also a bunch of other people too. If your health is consistently too low, the healer has to focus on healing you to the exclusion of everyone else just to keep that next blow you take from being your last.

Some of those other players may take damage, especially in fights like Ick and the ramp before the tunnel run immediately after in Pit of Saron, and die from lack of healing if the healer has to be all over you.

The more health you have, the safer the healer will feel in letting you get your face beat in while he or she is busy popping some much needed heals on the rest of the party. Right? That seems reasonable, amiright?

From hearing me talk, you might think that there is no better thing than having a huge health pool. After all, I’m implying that the more you’ve got, the more time the healer has to react, right?

Well, that is true, IF you have balanced your health with avoidance.

For the long time theorycrafters out there, please realize that I’m not speaking about armor caps and mitigation, or Defense or Dodge Rating, or comfortable Critical Strike levels for Savage Defense. We’re talking the basics of Stam vs Agi.  It’s okay, trust me, I know you got this already. :)

Back to health balanced with avoidance.

You have been a dutiful bear tank, you have gotten new gear upgrades through drops and Emblems while following my lists, and along the way you have stacked Stamina like a madman. Er, bear.

You pop into Heroic Pit of Saron, and you are surprised to find that you feel very squishy. You have lots of health, that’s true, tons and tons and gobs and oodles of health.

Problem is, when the big hits come in, you go down like a… umm… wow, okay, for the adults, pretend there was a Navy shore leave joke there, and a good one at that. For everyone else, let’s say you go down like a stone dropped in a still pond. A pond with aerated water.

You have the big health numbers, but you’re taking massive damage, and that health pool is disappearing fast.

Now, if your healer is from a pug, or is generally unfamiliar with you, they might have seen your high health and assumed you were well balanced in gear. With that thought in mind, they might have given you scant attention, and focused more on keeping the party alive.

Suddenly, your health plummets, they abandon the party in a panic to spam mana-intensive big, fat, fast heals on you, and by the time they started you were already below half and dropping fast.

You’ve got a massive health pool. The healer is used to getting you topped back off to full and then going back to the party.

Low and behold, you’re NOT getting back to full, because you keep taking damage. The healer is trying to fill an infinite well with a thimble, the party members are yelping and trying to find the Potion or *gasp* Bandage buttons, while the DPS are frantically fending for themselves the damage going outbound slows down, and the fight takes even longer.

The healer quietly has a nervous breakdown while wondering what *they* are doing wrong.

I think you get the overdramatized point.

This is where Agility, and the avoidance it brings, comes into play.

As your Dodge (and Dodge Rating, Defense Rating, Armor, all the avoidance and mitigation stats) increases, the rate of speed of incoming damage slows down.

Mitigation is already reducing damage taken, and your Dodge is causing some attacks to be avoided entirely. As you increase Agility, the better your Dodge score becomes, and the more attacks that just go whizzing by your cute furry ear.

Agility also improves your Critical Strike Rating, and as your Crits become more frequent, your Savage Defense passive ability procs more often. Savage Defense, of course, causes the next incoming physical attack that does damage to be lessened by 25% of your attack power. It can proc as fast as you can crit, and your Swipe has the potential to cause an individual Crit from every single mob hit. That’s a lot of chain crits when swarmed, and that’s a whole lot of mitigation.

That is why stacking Stamina gems to a lower health level than you might think, and balancing the rest with Agility, can be such a powerful combination for your runs.

The healer may be taken aback by your seemingly low comparative health. Say, 40,000 health. A mere pittance, you think.

And then, as the fight begins, the effects of your 50%+ Dodge come into play.

Attacks will still strike you, but the frequency of successful attacks is reduced, you take damage at a slower pace, and the healer has a lot more time to react to the damage you HAVE taken. Time that can better be spent ignoring your invulnerable silly bear butt and paying attention to those DPS that forget to hustle their tushies out of the green fire. Again.

That is the point to balancing Agility and Stamina. Having the health to survive the big single blows and rapid damage spikes, and the avoidance and mitigation to slow the rate of incoming damage overall way the hell down.

So, how much should you take of both? What are the limits?

It depends purely on your understanding of how health and Dodge affect your role in your groups, and then basing your decision on the content you are trying to prepare to run. 

I could link you to my character on the armory, Windshadow, assuming she is logged out in Bear gear (I have no Cat gear, I either tank or heal. No middle ground.) and let you see the choices I have made based on 5 person Heroic/no raiding gamestyles. But it’s not important, what is important is where I’m at just from non-raid stuffs, and how effective it can be.

In current gear, my health totally unbuffed is 36,587 and my Dodge unbuffed at rest is 43.39%.

That Dodge seems low, doesn’t it?

But wait, there is more than is immediately apparent that I’ve factored into my gear plan!

First, I have The Black Heart, for a frequently procced increased physical damage mitigation buff. You’d be surprised what an extra 7k armor can do against physical damage.

For increased Dodge aside from gems and enchants, I have factored in Darkmoon Card: Greatness (Agility), the Mongoose weapon enchant and the Idol of the Corrupter.

So, unbuffed base of 43.39%.

• Add 1.66% when Lightning/Mongoose procs (and it procs a LOT on group swipes).
• Add 3.89% when Darkmoon Card: Greatness procs.
• Add 2.02% when the Idol procs.

When all three buffs are up, which does happen quite often, I’m running around with 50.96% Dodge. Unbuffed.

Mongoose is damn near always up, and at least one of the other two is usually with it.

Add in Mark of the Wild, Kings (I carry Drums of Forgotten Kings, of course) and Agility food buffs and it just goes up from there.

That health probably seems a bit low even after you’ve read all this Dodge gunk, but I always carry Runescrolls of Fortitude, so I know that when the Big Bear be tanking, I’ve got a Fort buff guaranteed. :)

The final result?

I cannot play without having any healer at all… but there have been plenty of times when the healer has gone down, and I have lasted a truly ridiculously long time without heals on a boss fight or against multiple mobs, because although my total health pool at start is lower than most tanks, if I am suddenly on my own, I have the option of popping Survival Instincts, Frenzied Regeneration and Lifeblood, and becoming a full-on energizer bunny, with the avoidance and mitigation to slow down the rate of incoming damage to a crawl.

The lesson to be learned as a Bear tank is, if you intelligently balance health and avoidance against the content you are running, throw in a well timed powerful self-heal and a temporarily increased health pool as needed, and use Barksin and Crit like a banshee, you’re going to be a favorite tank for healers… at least, the ones that like to know at least ONE idiot in the run won’t be driving them nuts.

Stratus, I sure hope this helps you gain a bit more insight into the considerations you make when looking at gemming.

At the very least, thank you for a nice, polite, friendly and well written letter. I hope you and your friend have plenty of fun chewing on all the things I intentionally left out. :)

Take care, everyone!

Today, I received an email from Intravax, who had a harrowing story to tell;

We had 3 of our members’ accounts stolen within the last month. No major damage as there are caps to what ppl are allowed to withdraw from the vault.

Then one of our officers got hit and that did a bit more damage, although it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be replaced in a week or 2.

Then, this Monday on 3/1/2010 it was like our WoW version of Sept 11th. All our officers got hit, including our GL (each of us have authenticators) and 6 other guildies.

The hackers were like a virus and multiplied by immediately inviting several dozen other characters and promoting them all to the highest rank possible, and we were cleaned out and all our toons were deleted (most of us had at least 3-4 Lvl 80’s all geared in T9 or above). As an added twist to the gut, before the toons were deleted the hackers used them to spam in /trade and /general for their gold selling companies, thereby getting our accounts suspended our reputation tarnished.

All 6 tabs of our vault were filled to the brink with top level flasks, gems, enchants, crafting mats, buff food, etc.  Additionally, we had over 75k gold which was donated by the officers and guild members to offset the costs of all the crafting materials that were donated.

Is it a claim made by a reader, impossible for me to confirm? Yes.

Do I believe the writer? Yes. Yes, I do. The entire email was very well written, it wasn’t asking for any kind of action or publicity on my part. Intravax was just letting me know what had happened to him, his friends and their casual guild, and giving me a heads up to be careful with my own casual guild bank settings, so that the chances of the same thing happening to Sidhe Devils might be reduced.

Thank you, Intravox. I can assure you, having been the victim of account hacking years ago myself, before Burning Crusade was released, I know at least a little of how it feels to come in and find that your character or account is trashed.

In my case, the hacking happened in mid-session, Christmas Eve several years ago, while I was on vent with friends in Undead Strat doing, as I recall, a timed Baron run. So, I got to hear, live and in person, the play-by-play details as my friends followed my character, still all in party together, through hearthing from Eastern Plaguelands/Strat Undead to Ironforge, watched me strip naked, and then, still in party with my main, watched as party chat showed my character D/E’ing all my stuff , mailed the mats off… and then followed my character as it ran back and forth from the bank to the mailbox, sending off all my stuff to someone else.

At least my character wasn’t deleted.

Merry Christmas, Windshadow!

Talk about wanting to just quit the game in disgust. That right there is a feeling of violation that is difficult to overcome. The emotional aspect, quite apart from the inconvenience of lost items, characters or gold that might be returned after an investigation, is hard to describe.

What is it? Why does this keep happening, despite the best efforts of Blizzard to prevent it?

Sophisticated methods for hacking player accounts are designed, developed, tested and implemented.

This represents a significant investment in time and resources on someone’s part.

What would be the incentive to cause folks to go to such extended lengths to get access to your account?

Here is my assumption; real world money is the incentive.

It is my assumption, my theory, that the majority of hacked accounts are performed by gold sellers looking for inventory to sell to a willing market, and not malicious punk kids with too much time on their hands.

A market of consumers that will seek them out and offer them real world currency in exchange for virtual world gold.

I don’t buy gold, and you don’t buy gold, and nobody you have ever known has ever bought gold… and yet, somehow… people still make money selling gold.

Funny, isn’t it?

It’s my understanding that there are several ways gold sellers acquire the gold they offer to fulfill orders.

First, there are people that work directly for gold sellers, that go out and farm and play the auction house to develop gold.

Second, there are people who may be regular players like anyone else, but they work as affiliates, independant ’stringers’, and when they have gold available to sell, they contact the gold sellers directly and offer it to them… for less than the gold seller will flip it for to the buyer. The gold seller has the website contacts to sell, the stringer has someone they know to sell to when they have some extra.

Methods one and two, as I described them, are fairly safe for the gold seller, but they represent an investment, an expenditure. They have to either pay someone to play to harvest the gold directly, or pay a stringer to get their supply.

The third method is to hack a stranger’s account, loot all their stuff, ship it off to a third party to clearance it, and then delete the account.

This is fast, and aside from developing the hacking method and identifying the target, inexpensive on the part of the gold seller. Either the account is hacked or not, and with guild banks, the potential score goes beyond access to one player’s account.

This business all revolves around the fact that players have something that has a real world monetary value, and there are those out there that have the means and the desire to take from others to enrich themselves. And even better… where are the cops to prosecute them for the stolen goods?

“Excuse me officer, but I had $1500 in property stolen last night.”
“Oh, really? Tell me, where did the crime take place?”
“On Kael’thas, Alliance side. They got everything. Wiped me clean out. They got away with over 25,000 gold, enchanting mats, Frozen Orbs and epics with a street value of $1500. And they defaced my property by deleting my characters!” 
“Uh…. huh. Get the hell out of my sight, nutball.”

In almost all cases, I would be willing to bet that it is not a vindictive or malicious act; I really believe it is the real world monetary benefit that keeps them doing this.

So long as you have something they want, something that is valuable to them, and there is no actual risk involved to them in taking it, then they will continue to plot means of stealing you blind.

I would like to propose a possible solution.

Blizzard, please, open an official micro-transaction store and just sell the gold yourself.

Do it.

No limits on how much, make it legal, and price it so low that it’s undercutting the gold sellers.

Players are somehow able to find gold sellers online, so I’ve got to imagine, since you’ve got computers and the internet yourselves, that you could figure out where they are and how much they charge.

Give the player, the person that seems unable to tear themselves away from buying gold, a legitimate, safe and dependable location to get it from.

Remove any reason someone may have to visit a gold seller outside of Blizzard.

Tell the players, if they really cannot stand to farm gold for epic flying or that awesome epic hammer on the AH themselves, you will give them a place to go where they know they’re getting the best deal, the transaction will be safe, they will not be subject to viruses or hacking, and they will not be risking an account ban.

On the flip side, make it clear that if you DO catch anyone buying gold or selling gold outside their own store, you WILL still ban their account.

I didn’t want to make the obvious analogy with prohibition and alcohol… but seriously. If players, regardless of what the consequences may be to them, continue to go give the gold sellers money, then the gold sellers will continue to find ways of getting it to give.

Remove the incentive. Take away their payday. Reduce their market to nothing.

Make them go find someone else to rip off.

Now, I’m not naive. I know that the WoW economy is very involved, and Blizzard does a lot to try and balance the availability of gold through play with the number of things that you can spend it on. Blizzard is a world economy in scope, and they have to do a lot of work behind the scenes to battle inflation.

That being said… I think, purely my own opinion but what the heck, on a blog that’s what you get, pure opinion, but I think I can safely say people are sick and tired of wondering if today is the day some thief has hacked their account.

Just do it. Cut out the middle man, sell the gold yourself, and call it a day.

I won’t buy it, but someone out there sure as heck will, and you’d be performing a valuable service for the community if you can finally find some way of cutting the gold sellers off at the knees.

Of course we shall. :)

So, referring purely to the Blue post here without any clarifications or updates, let’s look at how what’s been announced may affect us. 

Ever since the announcements were made at Blizzcon about major changes to the stat system, I’ve been eager to hear how this will affect us.

The most interesting change they touched on during the Blizzcon, to me, was their intent to roll out the Bear style of being uncrittable to all other tanks. That has now been confirmed.

Defense changes

Defense will go away, and all tanking classes will have a particular mode that makes them uncrittable;  “Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.”

How does that affect Bears?

First, we can claim to have lead the way to eventual enlightenment for the tanking masses.

We can also claim to be the bringers of joy to friends and sorrow to our enemies, but that doesn’t mean anyone will believe us.

Hopefully, what this really means is that we will cease having ignorant fools tell us we aren’t capable of tanking such-and-so in a random because “You’re not Defense capped”.

Worst case scenario, we’ll continue to be able to mock fools who say this, and other tanks will finally find out what hearing that feels like as their Defense stat goes away. After all, how do you respond to such blatant ignorance? To such a telling statement that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the person uttering this idiocy is completely unschooled in the mechanics of your class, and yet still feels it is somehow their place to not only judge you, but to tell you “You’re doin’ it wrong” and then boot you from group.

Not that I’ve ever seen that in the game myself. Oh, nooooooooo. Not I. Nevah.

Recap; what are our important stats?

Armor, Stamina, Agility, Critical Strike Rating, Hit Rating and Expertise, with a healthy dose of Defense and Haste for flavor.

What will change?

We already addressed Defense going bye-bye. For our Necklaces, Rings and Trinkets we’ll need to watch to see what stats Defense gets converted into. This one item, out of everything in the post, is the one that worries me.

Example? Shard of Pirouetting Happiness. Decent item, no Agility, but the mix of Stamina, Defense Rating and Dodge Rating make it quite tasty. It is representative of how shared tanking items, rings and necklaces, are being itemized to date.

That Defense Rating will soon go away. What will replace it? A universal stat like Stamina or Dodge Rating? Both would be useful to all tanks. It would make sense.

If it’s Parry or Block, we have a net loss. And if it’s Block, so do Death Knights.

The direct quote from the post was “No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.”

From what I can see, there is no mention whatsoever of giving Bears a Parry or Block. We can expect to continue to tank with our big furry faces. If it turns into Dodge Rating on items all tanks use and share, and Block and Parry for plate items, then excellent, except for the poor Death Knights.

Okay, I know, dead horse, I’ll let it go. I think I’ve made my point. But I hear that train a comin’, it’s coming round the bend, and I ain’t seen the sunrise, since I don’t know when…

Edit: I’ll leave what I originally said about Parry in quotes below, but please look at the comments to see how folks saw I represented mob Parry mechanics wrong, and the comments they made about it.

With Parry, there is a change to this that might affect us in a positive way.

From what I read in their phraseology, they are saying that Parrying an enemy blow will not speed up the next attack.

I interpret that to mean the enemy swing timer will not be reset upon a successful Parry, which results in faster enemy attacks.

What this would mean to me is, on enemies where you sometimes have two tanks side by side to spread Cleave style damage and divide it, if that other tank Parries, it should not mean increased attack speed on you. More steady, predictable incoming damage, fewer chain spikes. I’m just speculating, but it sounds good and is consistent with what their stated intent is. 

As far as Stamina is concerned, they’re also saying that non-tanks and non-plate wearers will be getting more Stamina in comparison to existing tanks. Our flock, whom we grimly shephard through the valley of ass whuppin’s, shall be less squishy in general. Yay!

On the flip side, Bears in particular will once again be seeing a reduction in our Stamina multiplier in Dire Bear form, to compensate for the increase and keep us more in balance with the Plate wearers.

Personally, I’d like to be higher in Health or Dodge than the other tank classes, enough to once again notice. Just to emphasize the difference between tanks, and to compensate a little more for the lack of Block and Parry.

Not a big deal, I just miss that one thing a Bear could claim as their niche, physical damage bosses. 

Armor is mentioned, and I hate to say it, but I expect we will see a multiplier reduction again.

We use Leather that gets affected by a multiplier. So far, they’ve reduced the multiplier several times to rein us in. Our gear has also been adjusted downward, and bonus armor on leather was reduced or removed entirely. If they move Leather up in armor value for Rogues, expect to see the multiplier go down again for us. If the plate wearers get their armor reduced to bring them down closer to the others… again, expect to see our multiplier reduced to keep us in line.

It doesn’t sound like any of the other stats are actually going to change in how we use them, but of course the spread on gear is going to play a big part on how things turn out.

Especially this new stat, Mastery. 
 
“Mastery – This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It’s directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.”
 
Can anyone tell me what the hell Mastery is going to make better about tanking? If I choose a tanking spec, and have Mastery points, does that mean my Armor multiplier works better? My Stamina goes up? I get shiftier, maybe?

Seriously now. How about this… if I’m a tank, I have hard, firm numbers on my Health, Dodge, Block, etc. I can directly control every one of those with stat proportions that are intended for tanks in the first place.

But I can’t directly increase Threat generated by my attacks without increasing my overall damage output.

How about, for tanks, making Mastery increase Threat Generation by a percentage, to all abilities? To scale it up without being tied so directly to DPS output?

That’s my hope. I can’t wait to see what they decide. 

For Hit Rating and Expertise, the post said they will be much harder to “cap out”. Bear tanks have never had to focus 100% on capping HR or Exp, but if it truly does get reduced a lot, then I foresee a time when raiding Bears will want to re-examine using a Glyph of Growl to increase the likelihood that Taunt will hit exactly when you MUST have it work.

They’re removing Weapon Skills from the game entirely. This won’t affect Bears in any way whatsoever, since Druids in form are always treated as having max weapon skill allowable for their level. As a player of a Paladin that hit 80 and then spent two hours grinding as soon as he got a new weapon using Argent Tournament tokens, before he could bloody well tank with it… and then did it again when he got yet another different style weapon from his first TOC run…THANK GOD.

Now, let’s quote that little section towards the end, their breakdown;

 If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:
 
    * A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
    * Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
    * Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina. Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.

First, we already covered Stamina. We’ll be getting tweaked to stay where we are.

Strength if you wear Plate, Agility if you wear leather. Does this mean that Bear form will no longer get any AP/DPS benefit from the Strength stat?

Add that to the one that follows; Existing Attack Power is getting turned into Agility and Stamina.

Attack Power, which right now increases our DPS output only, will now give us both increased Crit, increased Dodge, and more Health.

That actually reinforces my belief that Mastery will be a Threat buff, and also makes me wonder if they are intending on making the Strength/Defense items I’ve been whining about useful for Plate wearers only, and having Bears go to the DPS Agi/Stam items only. Right now, Strength is not wasted, it increases our DPS and therefore our threat. When you factor that into the way Stamina on those items is significantly higher than on the DPS items, our choice has been unhappy, but clear.

Maybe that will change in the future. I’m still worried, because the Stamina really is that low on those other items.We’ll see. Long days yet to come, and I’m sure many will voice their concerns over a balanced distribution of stats for Bears as well as Cat/Rogues.

Last but not least – Reforging.

This is pretty crazy. I have one question that must be answered before we can make any real determination; when you reforge an item, is it permanent?

Adding what they said here with what they said in Blizzcon, the idea of Reforging is not to swap “core” stats one with the other, Like Agility and Stamina for Bears, but instead to let you adjust the “support” stats like Hit Rating, Haste, Expertise, Critical Strike Rating, etc.

There is a clear intention here to make a distinction between core stats and support stats. Once we know for sure what those are, and whether changes made to gear will be permanent, we will be able to make better Wild Ass Guesses.

Still, it’s clear this is about making sure you get the full benefit of what you loot. Have too much of one thing? You can swap it for, if not the FULL point value of something else, at least something useful, which is a damn sight better than nothing. I know that I’m over hit cap right now, but way under the expertise cap. I’d sure love to be able to make that swap… so long as I wouldn’t be permanently losing that, currently, superfluous hit rating. What if I get an upgrade later that puts me under the hit cap? What then?

I can’t wait to see Reforging, I expect it to be like Socketing different gems, and that’s going to be very useful.

Edit: as mentioned in the comments, Blue replies to their thread reference new items, Scrolls of Reforging, that will have a direct application such as Critical Strike => Hit Rating. Thinking aloud, I wonder if this might work similarly to Armor Kits, only useable on some item slots, and when applied, showing as similar to (but not conflicting with) Enchants. If so, then applying a new Scroll of Reforging would simply restore the original stats by wiping away the previous Scroll, and then apply the new Scroll to the baseline. Leaves the door open to limiting the Scrolls to only work on armor items (no weapons, shields, neck, ring or trinkets) if that’s what they choose. Again, time will tell.

All in all, we are getting off pretty darn light. I bet the other tanks are full of anxiety right now, and can you blame them?

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming… What do we do, we swim, swim…

I will be copying the entire text in just a moment, so those of you behind firewalls at work can mull them over. I will do a second post, with only those announced changes that directly affect tanking Druids, for a more focused discussion related to Bears.

In this big announcement, one thing was made clear;

These changes will go live before Cataclysm is launched.

For those of us that have been playing for a while, we know what that means, don’t we, my friends?

Run around screaming in panic and pour hate and fear all over the forums!! Arrrgggghhhhhh!!!!

Just kidding. I’m sure we won’t see ANY panic or fear being spread all over the forums in the wake of this announcement. Not at all. In fact, I bet everything is being peacefully discussed like mature adults even as we speak. No end of the world doomsday talk of any kind. Nuh uh.

Do you remember the first big reboot? When Burning Crusade was about to be released, but wasn’t out quite yet?

All the changed Talent Trees went live about a month in advance of the BC expansion.

For a short period of time, Raiding people went bugnuts, because for most classes, the new Talents and restructuring really gave some “oomph” to players. 

It was a period of a month or more of chaos. Raiding almost felt like EZ mode for many people used to a fine-tuned system that was super-tight, and measured upgrades in the range of +2 Agility, upgrades that many considered themselves damn lucky to get.

Well, the massive changes are coming again. The gear that you have spent so long studying, planning for and obtaining is about to be reshaped into a form consistent with the changes. 

Some of that gear may not end up in a condition that leaves you with your current gear expectations fulfilled.

You may no longer be Hit Capped. You may be obscenely over Hit Capped. You just don’t know.

This is not a doom and gloom statement, or a “why bother” post.

It’s just a statement of fact. Things will change, and I can’t stress enough the importance of taking a deep breath, relaxing, and reminding ourselves that it’ll all be just fine.

Don’t panic.

Instead of worrying, just try and be proactive. Identify the things you can do in advance to plan for, and be prepared for the changes.

If you are raiding or playing and a potential upgrade drops, one that you might have passed up purely because it had MP5 and you do’t use that stat… make sure you are being open to it’s potential future effectiveness for your class. Soon enough, that MP5 will go away to be replaced by something else that you CAN use.

That’s really all I want to say before unleashing the wall o’ text. Take a deep breath, don’t panic, and think about how you may want to change your gear acquisition choices based on what is changing.

Without further ado, here is the text from the Blue post;

As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives.

The most obvious question these changes raise is “Why are stats being changed, and why now?” As the game has matured, we’ve run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a “good stat” for a class and a “bad stat” can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat — and these are just a few examples.

Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we’ll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.

What You’ll See on Gear

Stamina – Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.

Spirit – Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.

Intellect – Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.

Haste – Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you “do stuff” more often.

Block Rating – Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.

Parry – Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.

Mastery – This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It’s directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.

Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.

Resilience – This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.

Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating – These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details — such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) — are likely to change.

Being Removed from Items

Attack Power – This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.

Spell Power – Spell Power is another stat that you’ll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.

Armor Penetration – This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.

Shield Block Value – This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.

Going Away Completely

MP5 – This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.

Defense – Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.

Spell Ranks – Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.

Weapon Skill – This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.

What Else You Should Know

Combat ratings – All ratings will be much harder to “cap out” at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.

Reforging – While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.

Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We’ll have more details on this in the future.

Changes to Existing Gear

As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.

If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:
* No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
* No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
* You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
* Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.

If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
* Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
* Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
* No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.

If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.

If you are a healer, expect to see:
* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.

If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:
* You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.
* Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.
* You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.
* Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.
* Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.

Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We’re also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren’t widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).

We’re aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven’t yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we’ll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.