Comments on: When to use shield wall?

By: ixobelle

ixobelle — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:38:58 +0000

i was on vent back in MC if that gives any indication. There were about 5 of us doing all the talking in a 40 man raid, but i think people were just shy.

I personally have a REALLY SEXY voice, so it didn’t bother me? lol

By: Tales of the Aggronaut » Archive » Can’t Brain… has the dumb

Thu, 14 May 2009 18:05:49 +0000

[...] over at Spinksville presents a nice concise guide to some of the thinking surrounding how best to determine when is the [...]

By: Stabs

Stabs — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:35:50 +0000

The short answer is if you don’t need it at any point in the fight why save it?

Are you seeing fights where at a specific point you can see the healers are struggling and need the tank to help them through a crisis, Sarth3 style. Obviously you have to time it for that fight.

But if you’re doing, say, Malygos and it’s unlikely you will have time to react to a “oh crap” moment if you suddenly spike low because you’re moving in a complex way that takes a lot of your focus. (Ie, you probably don’t have spare attention to also watch your life bar while doing everything else you need to in Phase 1). Why not just pop it to ease the healers’ burden? If you never use it on Malygos it just goes wasted. You could pop it after one of the vortexes instead when you know the healers are stretched but there’s not a specific crisis since if there is a crisis (eg out of range) by the time you spot it you’re dead.

The longer answer is about conceptualisation of mathematical models. It will take me a while to figure it out and post it.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:53:31 +0000

That’s an interesting build he’s got. But what if you don’t need to be using cooldowns all the time? Doesn’t that make speccing for them a bit of a waste of points?

I think you’re right, and I know I should be trying to use cooldowns more often. But … sometimes you just don’t need it is all.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:51:36 +0000

I think most raiding is, but not everyone. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Nihilum/ Ensidia didn’t use voice chat?

I’m trying to remember how it used to be. I thiiiiiink we had voice chat in vanilla wow but I never liked talking on it much. There was a fair amount of typing. And a lot of discussion pre-fight on bboards.

I also remember I had addons (as priest class leader) to give everyone their assignments before every fight.

By: ixobelle

ixobelle — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:41:20 +0000

as an old school tank, I’m STILL getting used to the fact it’s a 5 min cooldown, and blowing it isn’t a huge deal anymore. Same with AOE taunt, I just USE it now, where before I’d hesitate.

By: The View From Down Here » Blog Archive » Cool down!

The View From Down Here » Blog Archive » Cool down! — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:35:56 +0000

[...] in answer to Spink’s question, When to use Shield Wall? My answer is “All the freakin’ time”. These days my old threat-oriented spec [...]

By: Ysharros

Ysharros — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:53:33 +0000

RE: communication, this has intrigued me for a long time. Is most raiding comms voice nowadays? How did you manage before? Or is there a lot of pre-fight prep where people can discuss strategy?

I’ve always wondered that — I type fast, but when the crap hits the fight fan it’s usually all I can do not to get myself killed, and I don’t even raid!

By: Stabs

Stabs — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:43:26 +0000

As a DK tank my answer is All of the above (and more).

I think this is different from most Warrior tanks and the reason for this is partly due to the differences in class mechanics but also partly due to historic influences.

In 3.0 DKs could get very close to 100% cooldown uptime with certain specs. This taught us to simply keep all of our cooldowns on cooldown (sic).

Warriors are coming at it from the other end. In Vanilla Shield Wall was a once per 30 minutes affair. Also damage was pretty slow, you genuinely could react to a spike by using Shield Wall to save yourself.

I think it may well be time for Warriors to move towards the DK model. This post is Yakra’s take on a Warrior set-up emphasising cooldown uptime and survivability:
http://mirrorshield.blogspot.com/2009/02/duel-spec-build-1-of-2-defensive-100-cd.html

Of course predictable spikes (like the last 5% on Patchwerk) are still worth saving cooldowns for.