Occasionally it is my plan to post some videos of achievements and how to obtain them.

Today we're discussing Loken's achievement "Timely Death." It's actually one of the easier ones to obtain as a tank. The biggest load for this achievement will be on the healer.

Loken's abilities are as follows, quoted from wowwiki:

• Lightning Nova: Emit a pulse of energy that deals 6013 to 6987 Nature damage (about 10638 on heroic) to enemies within 20 yards. (5 sec cast)
• Pulsing Shockwave: Shocks all enemies every 2 sec., dealing damage based on distance from Loken. Damage is increased the greater the distance away from Loken. Infinite range.
• Arc Lightning: Shocks the target dealing 3238-3762 Nature damage and giving the target a chance to shock nearby allies (within 10 yards). Note that the when the target shocks nearby allies, they also receive the Arc Lightning debuff, meaning that this ability can "spread", plague-style, as players continually "infect" each other.

The strategy I'm about to propose does require each of your players to be above 16,000 hit points. It also requires a lot of timing on the healer's part.

All DPS stand directly behind Loken. Spread out as much as possible while remaining within melee range. The s spreading out but being behind and to the sides of Loken will lessen the DPS mount of Arc lightning that the group takes.

Do not run out during lightning nova. Instead have the healer time a group heal to land immediately following it. This is especially easy if you have a priest who can start their prayer of healing spell while Loken is casting Lightning Nova.

As a Tank do everything you can to help your healer not need to heal you. Take potions, use cool downs, and plan to keep up your debuffs.

Here's the video, please feel free to leave any questions you may have in the comments. Also, you can view it in a higher quality resolution here.





Thanks go to Arcanirus, Terrence, Rivens, and Anowyn for taking part in this Heroic Loken kill.

So you're one of those folks that hasn't yet specced into deep wounds eh? Maybe you feel it's too DPS-ish? Maybe it's just too non-Tanky. If you're practical, you might even think you'll be squishier if you pick it up? Put to rest your fears and read on!

What makes Deep Wounds so great? Not only is it a huge damage boost (6-12% if you believe Ciderhelm) it's also a massive AOE tool.

Deep Wounds can proc off of Damage Shield.

This means that everything that hits you has a dot on it. Not just any dot either, this dot produces more threat than a Devastate! Think thorns on Massive-Gnomish-Annihilator-Steriods. Blizzard must have felt Vene's pain.

The best part is, you don't have to sacrifice anything to get it.

What about cruelty? Yes, I don't recommend having deep wounds and having all 5/5 in cruelty, but you're not really giving anything up! Cruelty has always been a pure threat stat. Point for point Deep Wounds is MUCH better.

What about all the other good survivability stuff in protection? While I could see a viable use for imp SW, the truth is I just don't use Shield Wall more than once every 5 minutes. It's possible that there may be some required spec for a certain boss that needs imp SW, but sort of unlikely. Other than imp SW there really aren't any other survivability talents that you won't be getting.

All said and done Deep Wounds is a must have.

Ever wonder if the 15 mobs you just pulled are all really looking at you? Want to make sure they're not really on the ret paladin in your group that for whatever reason happened to be right under you?

You could try moving and see if they all move in response. That will work unless they're casters. OR you could tab target each of them and watch omen like a hawk. Or you could scroll your mouse over each while watching your tool tip to make sure you have 100% threat on each. OR you could just get aloft.

Aloft is basically a re skinned version of the overhead health bars that exist in game, except better.

Aloft has a superb feature in it's threat bar. Its a little bar that runs directly under each mob's health bar if the bar is red then you're the main threat target of that mob. If its orange you've lost threat but should be able to get it back easily. If it's yellow it's time to taunt and throw a little threat at that mob. Having the bars up also makes mobs much more easily targetted.

Granted, there are plenty of ways to check if you're the primary threat target, however the ease of use that exists with Aloft makes it a must have in my opinion.

Here's the link with the threat bar if you'd like to go pick it up.

I live in a very mild coastal community where its extremely rare to see snow or ice. So its absolutely hillarious to watch when we do!

Enjoy

If you're anything like me you're thinking about caps and floors a lot right about now. So here's a basic reference post with what you need to know.

No matter what the percentages stay the same from level to level, so if you're not yet 80 don't fret. Just mouse over your statistics in your character pane, if your percentages match then you're capped. If they don't then you're over or under the cap.

We'll start with caps:

9% hit at 80 to hit level 83 mobs = 295.1 Hit Rating at 80
6.5% dodge reduction on expertise = 213.1 Expertise Rating at 80
~12.5% parry reduction on expertise = ~409.9 Expertise Rating at 80

Edit: I have recently been informed that there is new research to say that the hit cap may in fact now be 8% as opposed to 9%, if this is true then you only need 262 Hit Rating to cap.

Now, on to Floors:

Providing that you have 5.6% crit reduction when you mouse over your defense you won't be crittable. That's 689 defense Rating at 80. However that is truly the minimum you need, defense is phenomenal now, we want it and we want lots of it.

Why? Because Defense now affects avoidance, mitigation AND threat!

Not only does it give us some tasty avoidance just like it used to, but it also increases the frequency with which we block. If you're spec includes critical block (and it should!) your successful blocks have a 30% chance to block double the normal amount and increases your chance to critically hit with your Shield Slam.