The crit stops here.

My paladin dinged 80 last night. First order of business was to defense cap, and then run Heroic UP for a shot at the sword. Sword didn't drop, but I did a few times. Still, that was in part because my gear was kinda crappy (22k health and 23k armor buffed) and in part because my lovely wife would do silly things like Penance the mobs instead of me.

For those who are unaware, defense is the skill that makes things harder to hit and crit you. You need 140 defense over your level's base defense (which is 400 at 80) to be uncrittable. At level 80, 4.92 defense rating = 1 defense. Thus you need 140 x 4.92 = 688.8 defense rating to become uncrittable. Since defense rating doesn't come in fractions, you need 689 defense rating to truly be uncrittable.

Now, stats like stamina and armor are well and good for tanking, but defense is truly king (note this doesn't apply while you are leveling to 80; those instances are tuned with crittable tanks in mind.) The goal here is to reduce spike damage. You can have all the health and armor in the world, but if you keep taking crits, your healer isn't very likely to be able to keep up. And dead tank = dead group. Remember to gear for survivability first, and threat second. If you aren't uncrittable, no one will take you seriously as a survivable tank.

A quick look at what I did to defense cap:

When I dinged 80, I had ~580 defense rating. The defense rating cap is 689, so this meant that I had to cover an extra 100 or so rating to get myself capped. First stop was enchants. In my case, the guild enchanters had enough dust and shards that I only had to grab nonstandard enchanting mats.

Enchant Cloak - Titanweave - This required two Titanium Bars.
Enchant Chest - Greater Defense - This just required an Eternal Earth.
Enchant Shield - Defense - This was a scroll mailed to me by a guild enchanter who was leveling his enchanting. But if I had to buy the mats, I would have needed six Eternal Earth.
Enchant Bracer - Major Defense - This is a BC enchant, but we still had some mats in the bank for it.

That's about all you can do with enchants to boost your defense. However, that is only 70 defense rating. Where did the remaining defense rating come from?

Daunting Handguards
Daunting Legplates

Those pieces are both chock full of defense rating and are pretty easy to make (so says my Mining/BS friend.) While the gloves were technically a downgrade, becoming uncrittable is THE MOST important thing you can do as a tank. Not everyone has it as easy as Druids do.

While those pieces alone satisfied me, if you just hit 80 and are still strapping for more defense, there are some other easy to make blacksmithing pieces available with high defense. These pieces should be replaced reasonably soon, as they are rather low level, but never go below 689 defense rating.

One final note is gems. I personally prefer to enchant for defense first so that I can gem for stamina, dodge, or whatever else I need. But you can easily close the gap with defense gems. Thick gems offer +12 or +16 defense rating, while Enduring gems offer +6 defense rating/+9 stamina or +8 defense rating/+12 stamina. Additionally, there is a meta gem that provides defense rating, which is an especially good choice for paladins because of the 5% block value, as they pretty much always have a >40% block chance (>70% with Redoubt) and the block value also provides extra threat to Shield of Righteousness, one of the highest threat moves in a paladin's rotation.

Once you have geared yourself to uncrittability, it's time to get out there and tank! Heroics are fair game, though I would probably wait until you've upgraded about half of your gear from heroics before moving on to raiding (Sartharion is probably okay, though.) Good luck and have fun!

A guide where I show you how to REALLY own Anzu.

*Updated 8/27/2009: With the advent of Savage Defense, you probably don't even have to be 80 to do this. In fact, I don't even bother to shift out and heal any more. Still don't have my mount drop. /cry

The rest of the guide is unedited from its original form, due to laziness, mostly.*

This is a guide for Feral Druids to stealth to Anzu and kill him solo. This guide does assume a few things.

• You must be Level 80. Mostly because the gear you need to do this requires it.
• You must be reasonably well-geared. When I say that, I don't mean you need to be fully raid geared. See the picture above? That is me in my (slightly old at this point) bear gear. I have 32597 health, unbuffed. You could probably do it on 28k health and 22k armor.
• You must have done the Epic Flight Form Quest. None of that silly, "I waited until 71 and just bought it from the trainer" stuff, you have to be one of the druids who EARNED epic flight form.
• Bring a potion or a healthstone. Or both. You probably won't need him, but there is a chance that you can be stunned at the beginning of a banish phase, in which case, you'll want the extra healing.
  

With that out of the way, head to Sethekk Halls! In case you've forgotten, it's in Auchindoun. It's the east instance. When you enter the instance, hit cat form and stealth.

Getting There



In the picture above, the orange line is the instance portal. The yellow line is the path you will be taking. For the most part it's a linear walk to Anzu. The thing to keep in mind is that though Darkweaver Syth can see stealth, at level 80 you can walk by him without so much as a fuss, as long as you stick to the outside of the wall. If you're a Night Elf and you happen to aggro him, you can run outside the far door, break line of sight, and Shadowmeld.


In the picture above you can see about how close you can get to Darkweaver Syth. Just follow along the wall and you should have no problems with him noticing you. After you go up the stairs, and into the next room, you should encounter the Avian Rippers. Staying along the right wall will get you past them, but beware the one ripper in the middle that likes to brush right up against the wall.


When you get past this room, you are now in the room where the battle takes place. Now all you have to do is clear the trash in the room and summon Anzu.

Clearing the Trash

When you clear the trash, for each pull, it is important to note what mobs are in what pull. As the illustration below suggests, there is a specific order in which you want to do things.

Prophets die first, because they fear, and if you end up getting feared into another pack, it's probably game over, try again. Next on the kill list is the Shamans, as they heal, and that's never a good thing. Next should be Talon Lords as they have a rather annoying stun. From there, just kill whatever has the lowest health.

At the beginning of each trash pull pop Berserk and Barkskin. Berserk will keep you from being feared, and Barkskin should just be used every cooldown anyway (general tanking advice here.) Targetting a Prophet, spam Mangle and Maul until it dies. If there's another Prophet, do the same. You should basically kill in the order outlined in the paragraph above.

As to the order of the pulls, refer back to the map of the path. I have six grey circles marked and one green one. The grey circles are the 4-pulls that are a random assortment of bird people. The green circle is the drake that pats in a circle around Anzu's summoning claw. The first thing you want to do is buff Thorns and Mark of the Wild. Then pull the group on the southeast corner. Then, heal up using Regrowth followed by Nourish spam. Pull the drake circling the middle when he's closest to you. Then pull the remaining groups in any order, waiting for your Berserk in between each pull. No, it's not necessary to do so, but Berserk makes these pulls a lot easier, both by increasing DPS substatially, and removing the possibility for fear.

Fighting Anzu


Look at the picture above (click to enlarge.) This is where you will be tanking Anzu. This coffer is in the southwest corner of the room. Now, look at the following picture (again, click to enlarge:)


After Anzu banishes himself, this is where you should go to heal.

There is one macro you should have for this fight:

/target Eagle Spirit
/cast Rejuvenation
/targetlasttarget

This will cast Rejuvenation on the Eagle Spirit, which will cause 500 DPS to all mobs in the room.

Make sure your buffs are still up, and all your cooldowns are available (The important ones for this fight are Barkskin, Berserk, Enrage, Frenzied Regeneration, and Survival Instincts.)

Summon Anzu.

If you wait near the coffer, he won't pull right away. When you're ready pull him. This is how I do the fight:

Start off by using the Eagle Spirit macro. This will not pull Anzu, so hit Bear Form, Enrage, and pull him over to the tanking spot, making sure to position him in a way that is outside of line of sight to the healing spot. When he is positioned, pop Berserk and spam Mangle+Maul. When that expires, start using Lacerate+Mangle+Maul, refreshing Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire when needed. Keep 5 stacks of Lacerate up. Anzu will occasionally stun you, but this should not be a problem at this point.

Eventually, he will Banish himself, at which point you should run to the healing spot. Cast Regrowth on yourself, then spam Nourish until you are either at full health or half mana. Use your Eagle Spirit macro and go back into bear, Demoralizing Shout the birds, and use Swipe+Maul to get the birds down. With nameplates up, you can easily target the lowest health bird to make sure it dies first, then move to the next lowest, and so on.

When Anzu comes back in the fight, you may still have one or two birds up. Get them down quickly, reposition Anzu, and get back to fighting him the way you were before, using Lacerate+Mangle+Maul and refreshing Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire when needed. If Berserk gets off cooldown, save it. You may find yourself getting pretty low during this phase. If that happens, use Survival Instincts+Frenzied Regeneration. Don't use Maul while regenerating. Continue through this phase until he banishes himself again.

When he does, it's back to the healing spot. Again, cast Regrowth on yourself, then spam Nourish until you are either at full health or half mana. Half mana is much more likely at this point, unless you just did a regen. If he stuns you at the beginning of this phase, you probably only have time for a Regrowth+Nourish, Eagle Spirit macro, and then back to Bear Form. You may have to use a potion or a healthstone. Use Berserk on the birds to clear them quickly, then Anzu should come back out. At this point, there is no Banish phase (since he does it at 66% and 33%) so you can tank him anywhere. Just keep up your rotation of Lacerate+Mangle+Maul, keep Demoralizing Roar and Faerie Fire up, and you should be done! When he falls, pray to the loot gods for your mount!

Now, the most important thing about this fight is keeping Anzu out of Line of Sight while you're healing. If he sees you cast a spell, he'll put Spell Bomb on you, which drains 2000 mana and does 1000 damage whenever you cast a spell. Since that's likely a third of your mana pool, you can't afford to get hit by it even once.

Good luck!

Trust me, you WANT the Meta Socket. You NEED the Meta Socket.

If you're looking for a tanking head drop, and just can't get a good one, I recommend dropping the forty badges on the Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Helm. In terms of tanking, the stats are better than the T7.10 Helm. It's only when you look at the socket bonus that the tier helm pulls ahead, in terms of survival. Of course, you could just do PvP and get a better helm, but if you have the emblems to spare and don't have a good enough arena team, go for it. I personally had a ton of emblems from the fact that I had nothing to spend them on. Still waiting for those gloves to be an upgrade.

Naxxramas a quatre ailes comme les chérubins.

Still have yet to do a full week of raiding, and we're up to having cleared all the wings in 10-man Naxx! Yay! I'm trying to find a good source to track our raid progress against the server. WoWJutsu is simply inaccurate, and WoWProgress only tracks 25-man raids. Ideally, it would use achievements to track the dates and segregate the 25 man guilds from the 10 man guilds. Bosses without achievements associated would probably have to be tracked with gear. Or, you know, that

One thing I noticed during our most recent encounter with Gothik, was just how much harder it is for Druids during that fight. To start out, I was on the undead side with the ret pally, death knight, resto Druid, and shadow priest. Warrior was on the living side with warlock, discipline priest, and two hunters. During the course of the battle, everyone on his side lives. Everyone on my side dies. Okay, let's swap tanks this time. Now I'm on the living side and the warrior's on the undead side. No one else changed sides. Everyone on the undead side lives. The warlock dies on my side. It was a successful fight, but it still bugs me that Swipe is such a narrow attack. And that I still have to mash it every cooldown, despite the threat buff. I just wish we had something else we could mash. Or not mash, as it were. It should be called "Bear Smash!" and function similarly to Thunderclap, only without the speed reduction and with more damage.

On a final note, I took a suggestion from Matticus and raised the funds for a public bank tab. So far I haven't heard much about it from the player base in my guild, except for my wife, who thinks it's pretty cool. We may start sticking overflow materials in there.

@Kralnor: My staff is a good one, too

So the other night we go into Naxx, ready to tear up. Oddly enough, the trash on the Military Quarter respawned even though we downed Razuvious. Oh well, we were headed to the Plague Quarter anyway to get to Noth. But those gargoyles were tough! We could do the other pulls fine, but the gargoyles were crazy! Somewhere in the middle of it, Ousted Bead Necklace dropped, which went to our priest healer. We decided to give up on the gargoyles after several attempts so we went to the Abomination Quarter to try our hand at Patchwerk. The first pull seemed a little off... we wiped on it once, then downed it and pulled some slime. About this point, our Druid healer says "It's on heroic!" Clearing heroic Naxx trash isn't too bad for our first week in Naxx. Ah well. Out we go and into normal Naxx.

The trash became a breeze. We got to Noth and one-shot him on our first time seeing him, and then Heigan... was a little different. We got him down, just a little after our normal stop time. He dropped Staff of the Plague Beast for me, so I was pretty pleased. It's actually the first bit of tank gear that dropped for our guild out of Naxx.

I've been picking up on tanking in 5 mans. You can't just go in tanking like you did in BC, not as a Druid anyway. You have to pretty much spam Maul and Swipe. That's really all you need, but you need to pick up aggro on all the mobs pretty quickly. Bosses are pretty much the same as before.

Oh, and I finally got enough emblems for my T7 chestpiece, which is the first thing I saved up for. I might get the tanking necklace next. I'm not sure. I'll figure it out later, I guess...

Drinking for Two

Last night I went through the two Dragonblight instances, AZ-Nub, and Old Kingdom for the first time. This is the third time tanking in Wrath, and I think I've learned something very important.

Starting with Rage is a huge boon. My current spec drops 2 points of Furor for Improved Mark of the Wild. This is good for soloing. This is fine for Cat DPS, where lag renders some of Furor's full bonus useless. For bears, this is damn near unacceptable.

Now, sure it may be fine for some people. But the groups that I lead are firecrackers. They go for the throat straight out of the gate, and if I'm to feel like a real tank (that is, actually have aggro) I need rage. And I need it NOW. I miss the 10 points at the start of Enrage. When I can't get that, and Furor doesn't pop, I'm screwed for rage. Sure I could sit there and keep shifting until it procs, and I've done that before, but I've had situations where I've shifted six times without a proc (supposedly a 0.4% chance of happening, but statistics is a poor model for randomness in a short term, particularly pseudorandomness,) all while the rest of the group is waiting for the pull.



That said, I'm going back to 5/5 Furor and also dropping Infected Wounds for Intensity. At least at the stage I'm in, threat generation is much more important than the mitigation provided by Infected Wounds, and in raids, it should be even less important as I have a Warrior there to Thunderclap. Also, I'm moving away from Shredding Attacks (which has seen little to no play at this point, oh how I'll miss thee...) and filling out the rest of Rend and Tear. The resultant spec should be satisfactory soloing, and much better in tanking.

The Big Bear Butt was right. My initial gut instinct was right (though I don't think I ever gave it words.) Intensity is huge. Very important for those first few seconds, especially if you have DPS who are above the curve (my Ret Pally is simply amazing, even for a Ret Pally.) Maybe I wouldn't need it so much if I weren't four levels below the hunter. Maybe I wouldn't need it so much if my Ret Pally, who's six levels below the hunter easily out-DPSes him. I'm okay with that though. I just want my Intensity back.