Do you remember Chamber of Secrets?

I've always been quite fond of the event bosses in WoW, and over the years they have increased in number. I can't remember which used to be the first one... I can't even remember all the ones we have now. Off the top of my head; The Yeti, Headless Horseman, Omen, Ahune, Crown Chemical Co., and ehh... some other probably really obvious ones I've forgotten about already. Yeah, I'm getting old.

But they haven't just added bosses, they've actually also removed a couple. Or at least one. Lazy as I am, I often end up having really old quests left in the quest logs of my alts. And by really old, I mean fracking old. I've already told you about the time I tried to finish The Cudgel of Kardesh on my lock, a quest I have yet to actually complete (I'll get back to you on that). When logging on to my shaman the other day, I stumbled onto this beauty - Chamber of Secrets. Remember Karazhan? Remember the event boss they put in there over Halloween 2008 (although not actually connected to Halloween)? If the answer to any of the above questions is no, you've missed out (especially if you don't know about Karazhan! GO DO IT NAU. Or read this handy post.).

Chamber of Secrets was, as mentioned, a special quest to kill a special boss during the Scourge Invasion event that foreboded the coming of Wrath of the Lich King and Northrend. "Omg!", you're probably thinking. "Who, what, when?! Please tell me more!". Tenris Mirkblood was situated inside an area of Karazhan where you wouldn't normally go and he only had two drops, two awesome drops however - a remodelling of Arcanite Reaper, and a 100% raid wide little Vampiric Batling pet.

And a lot better than Twilight.

I don't remember the fight as being particularly difficult. Not the roflstomp loot-piñatas of event bosses we have nowadays, back then things like these were actually some challenge - but definitely a lot easier than a regular raid boss would be.

Bat to the left.

Just as a proof of how long ago this was, this was during the short period of time when I was maining a warlock, and for some reason I never got around to doing it on any other character. Look at that cute little thing. No, I mean the bat. So yeah, now you know I'm cooler than you. Or maybe just that I've played this game for too long.

PvE Pet Buff/Debuff Guide (4.0)

I figured it was about time to collect all the new pets we're able, and even supposed, to handle nowadays. This isn't the first time Blizzard have completely revamped the pet system, and we've come a long way from how pets originally worked.
Remember when pets had different attack speeds making some pets vastly superior over others? Everyone wanted Broken Tooth, a rare spawn in Badlands, back then because he had the fastest attack speed and therefore was the best dps pet.
Remember when you had to level your pets from scratch? Whatever level your pet was when you caught it kept, and you had to level it all the way to max level manually. This meant taming lowbie pets was a real nuisance since your pet only got exp from mobs that you got exp from. So if you tamed a level 10 pet at level 60 you had to basically grind mobs all by yourself for the 50 levels your pet needed. Fortunately, pets never leveled as slowly as players.
Remember when they first introduced exotic pets in BC? They were overpowered and it seemed everyone used a Devilsaur back then, which for a time was the raiding pet to have.
Over the years they've normalized pet damage, introduced pet talents and varying pet skills, made it so that pets are only a maximum of 3 levels below you when tamed, made it so you could call a pet from the stables (without actually having to go there) and now finally given each pet a skill that corresponds to a buff or debuff given by a class.

Not all of these buffs are worth using in endgame pve of course, a few seem to be mainly aimed at pvp-utility. This will be a list on the pve-buffs/debuffs however. Some facts about the new skills;

• You need to be Beastmaster, aka be able to tame exotic pets, to be able to get all the buffs/debuffs.
• You don't need to fill your stables to get all the pve-buffs, as the PvE-buffs/debufs are only 12 (9 regular pets and 3 exotic pets), leaving 13 slots to fill with any pet you like!
• Ferocity Pets are still the ones dealing the most damage
• Apparently the Worms Burrow attack is the best aoe-damage for hunters right now (since Multi-shot was nerfed and Volley was removed)

I've listed the buffs worth having and what pet gives it, in some cases several, and also what player class can provide the buff. All the information is compiled from the ever-awesome pet site Petopia, so if you wish to find even more information in this matter (like where to find a certain pet) I suggest you check it out! Some information is taken from wowhead.com as well. This is just meant to be a quick check-list for the hunter on-the-go who wants to get his stables of pets up to date with 4.0 and Cataclysm. Like mentioned I haven't included the skills I think belong to pvping, like stuns, disarms, silences and movement slowing effects. Also there will be additional pets in Cataclysm which I will add to the list at that point. Some claim that pets now can bring all the debuffs/buffs as players can to a raid, but as far as I can tell this is far from true, there are plenty of buffs/debuffs still that only players can give.


PvE Pet Buffs/Debuffs

• 4% extra physical damage - Ravager/Worm - Combat Rogue/Frost Death Knight/Arms Warrior
• 20% armor reduction - Serpent/Raptor - Warrior/Feral Druid/Rogue (Apparently player armor debuff is weaker, only reducing armor by 12%).
• 25% reduced casting speed - Sporebat/Core Hound (Exotic) - Warlock/Arcane Mage/Rogue/Death Knight
• 8% increased magical damage - Wind Serpent/Dragonhawk - Warlock/Balance Druid/Unholy Death Knight/Assassination Rogue
• Strength/agility buff - Cat/Spirit Beast (Exotic) - Shaman/Warrior/Death Knight
• 30% increased bleed damage - Hyena/Boar/Rhino (Exotic) - Feral Druid/Sublety Rogue/Arms Warrior
• 20% reduced attackspeed - Tallstrider - Feral Druids/Death Knights/ Protection Paladins
• 5% crit - Wolf/Devilsaur (Exotic) - Feral Druid/Elemental Shaman/ Subtlety Rogue/Fury Warrior
• 10% reduced physical damage - Bear - Warrior/Feral Druid Bear/Warlock/Blood Death Knight/Protection Paladin
• Stamina - Silithid (Exotic) - Priest/Warrior/Warlock (Imp)
• Bloodlust (Heroism) - Core Hound (Exotic) - Shaman/Mage (Cataclysm)
• 25% reduced healing taken - Devilsaur (Exotic) - Rogue/Arms & Fury Warrior/Hunter/Shadow Priest/Demonology Warlock (Felguard)

And as a bonus - buffs/debuffs not covered by pets

• 10% melee haste - Shaman/Frost Death Knight/Survival Hunter
• 10% Attack Power - Enhancement Shaman/Marksman Hunter/Blood Death Knight/Paladin
• 5% Spell Haste - Balance Druid/Shadow Priest/Shaman
• 10% Spell Power - Demonology Warlock/Elemental Shaman
• 6% Spell Power - Mage/Shaman
• 3% damage - Arcane Mage/Beast Master Hunter/Retribution Paladin
• 5% base stats - Paladin/Druid
• Intellect - Mage/Warlock (Felhunter)
• Armor - Shaman/Paladin
• Spell Resistance - Shaman/Paladin/Druid (priests and hunters brings specific non-stackable resistances as well)
• Replenish - Shadow Priest/Frost Mage/Destruction Warlock/Restoration Druid/Retribution Paladin
• Mp5 - Warlock (Felhunter)/Shaman/Paladin

Hope this was to some help and let me know if something is missing!

Wannabe tanks - Hunter

Thought I had forgot about this ey? Well I had actually. Ahem. Anyway, here is the final post on "wannabe tanks". The remaining classes (excluding the actual tank classes) are priest, rogue and mage, and as the games looks today I don't see a possibility for these classes to be actual lowbie tanks. This is simply because they have no sustained way to reduce their damage taken - shamans have shields (which I noted in my post about lowbie tank shamans will make all the difference), and warlock/hunters tank with their pets. But like I wrote in my first post, mages and rogues (can't think of any priest though) have tanked end-game material. A mage was generally used to tank one of the adds at Maulgar in Gruuls Lair, and rogues have avoidance tanked some raid bosses too. But that is under the right circumstances and against the right kind of mob. A "real" tank has to be ready to take on nearly whatever is thrown in his face, and the same goes with lowbie tanks. So let's look at how a hunter would go about tanking in lowbie instances.

Tankability: Approximately level 10-60ish

- Like the warlock, a hunter will tank with his pet. Unlike a warlock however, a hunter can choose more between different options to get as good a tank pet as possible. You could also throw a glance at what I wrote about pet tanking earlier. You'd might also want to see this post about pet flaws. There are two features of a tank pet to look out for - their ability to take alot of damage and their ability to generate alot (or at least sufficient) threat, just as with any tank really. There are plenty of pets out there that are better suited at tanking than others. On really low levels like below level 25 this doesn't matter much. But as you get higher in level this will be more and more important. Petopia has alot of info about pets, so that you can find one tailored to your liking, but in case you're one of the TLDR people, I'll give you the short version - turtles are great for taking damage and bears are great for generating threat.

The Tenacity pets have special talents to do some proper tanking, so try to look for one of these (turtles and bears belong to this group). They actually even have a real taunt, among other nice talents. Overall I strongly recommend a bear pet. Not only are they totally cool, but their easy in care since they eat just about any kind of food (turtles eat quite alot of different food too though). But the real reason you'd want a bear pet is because of their specialy - swipe. Turtles have Shell Shield which will reduce their damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds (1 min cd). Swipe is an instant attack that will swipe a number of mobs in a frontal cone (yes, it is still a frontal cone for pets although they changed it for druid bears). This skill was greatly inferior to Apes Thunderstomp, but then Blizzard made Thunderstomp a talent in the Tenacity tree and tadaa, you've got a pet that has swipe -and- thunderstomp! I've had my pet grab aggro of real tanks all the way up to level 80 (if that means that the tank sucked or not I don't know..) even without growl up. The swipe -thunderstomp combo is awesome.
EDIT 21/8-10: Another great tank pet is the Crocolisk. The Crocolisk has a skill called Bad Attitude which basically works like a Retaliation, in any direction. Whenever the Crocolisk gets hit, he retaliates for some damage, which is awesome for holding aggro on several mobs. Crocolisks can be found around level 10 in Barrens and around level 15 in Loch Modan.

Both turtles and bears can be found at level 15, the level where you can enter the lfg tool to do some tanking. However, bears can be found nearly everywhere, while a level 15 turtle only can be found in Ghostlands (they're actually level 12-13).

- Unlike warlocks and shamans, hunters don't tank well by themselves, since they have no way of reducing damage taken (warlocks have Sacrifice and shamans have shields). You'll get Feign Death at level 30, so after that getting threat on yourself shouldn't be that much of a problem. Also, the right hunter pet usually does alot more threat than the warlock voidwalker (and a shaman I'd say).

- With some clever usage of traps you've got some extra crowdcontrol which can come in handy. Distracting Shot works like a real taunt nowadays, but only onto yourself (it does not work with misdirect unfortunately, not that it matters since you won't get misdirect until level 70).

Spec
There is really only one kind of spec to use if you want to be a proper hunter tank, and that is beast mastery. Simply because since your pet will do all the tanking you'd want your pet to be as good as possible, only the beast mastery talent tree will do this. The survival tree could offer some interesting talents for improving your own possibilities to tank, but since you wouldn't do it as good as your pet anyway I suggest you leave it at phantasies. I can't give you any recommendations really since most talents in the beast mastery tree are good to take, but of course mostly those that either improve your pet per se, or improve skills that involve your pet (like improved Mend Pet).

Gear
Just as with warlocks, hunters pets are affected by the gear you wear. Not all stats are affected, it seems only Stamina, Attack Power, Spell Power (useless) and armor are. Unfortunately I don't know the exact convertion numbers (but it seems to be high, around 50%), but that still means that any of these stats you put on yourself will to some part get to your pet as well. Since agility won't be transferred you'd want to go for stamina, stamina and more stamina.

All in all hunter tanks and warlock tanks are quite alike, although like mentioned a hunter pet is generally way better at keeping aggro than a warlock pet. On the other hand, tanking hard hitting elites is probably easier as a demo lock than a hunter. But you won't have to do that much!

Pets and why they annoy you

Pets can annoy you for varying reasons. A person who's a bad pet handler could easily wreck alot of havoc in any party and/or raid setting. Just the other day we had a hunter in my raid who accidentally pulled some trash in ICC with her pet. Luckily enough that particular pull didn't end in a wipe, but it easily could have! And I always forget to remove aggressive from my pet after having done Anub'Arak in AN, which always turns out funny (not). I know Love did a massive overpull on the Defias Ship in Deadmines on one of his hunters too. I still remember it although it was several years ago, just because it was so much fun seeing him play like a real noob. But this post won't be about pet handling, although that is a subject one could write quite much about. Instead I'd like to talk about pet AI, the things the pet do (and don't do) which the player who controls it (and everyone around) has little control over.

Anyone who ever plays a class which uses some sort of pet (i.e. lock, hunter or unholy dk's), will quickly notice that the sunday programmers over at Blizzard have reached new lows with some areas of the pet programming. I'm not counting the occasional pet summons, like treants or shadowfiend, but the more permanent ones. The others ones are usually not out and about long enough to get you into any real trouble.

The first problem with pets, and one of the most annoying, is when they grab a mob and run away with it like they're some love couple fleeing from justice. You really don't want to send your pet in for some tanking, and see him just keep on running, probably aggroing alot of other nasty stuff while doing it. I've actually died because of this, because when you're in a camp of mobs you don't have much maneuvering ground for that kind of behavior. Death Knights won't encounter this issue as much, since they don't use their ghouls for tanking very often.

So why does this occur and what can you do about it? Well, I can't say I know much about programming so I can't answer as to why it happens in terms of code. I have noticed however that the issue mostly arises whenever the pet has to attack a target that is already moving. So if you pull something and your pet rushes off to attack it because you've got him on defensive stance, he will engage the mob while it is on its way towards you. It seems that when the game has to calculate the pets positioning towards a moving target, which then in turn has to calculate its positioning towards the moving pet, could turn into (and mostly will turn into) this chain of running off and not stopping. There are two solutions to this problem. Either you have your pet engage the mob first, which might ease the games calculating of positions and make them stand still. This solution takes alot of waiting around for your pet to engage the mob however. Or you can bind your pet "follow" action to a key (it has a default key binding already, but I prefer to rebind it to something more available) and press it whenever he is on his way off somewhere. Just press it and then have him resume attack again almost immediately and those two should stop the running around. It's about breaking the cycle of "move" commands the server is sending those two.

The second issue is one that arises for anyone that has a summoned pet up. That is whenever a quest asks you to take control over something. That something will then count as your new pet, and this could "clash" with your current pet. I did some questing in Zul'drak on my lock and noticed that if I let a quest summon a "quest pet" for me while still having my regular pet up, I couldn't use the new pet. I had to dismiss the quest pet, resummon my pet, dismiss that one and then resummon the quest pet to make it work. Apparently the game just didn't know which pet I was using anymore!

A third issue I've noticed has only happened to my DK so far. Since I am frost specced I don't have a permanent ghoul, but one with a 3 minute cooldown. It happens, quite often I might add, that the game thinks I've got a ghoul summoned, but I clearly don't. The only way to make the game realize it's wrong so I can summon my ghoul is to relogg. Sigh...

And a fourth issue, which happens to all three pet classes but is the most annoying for a lock; whenever you get into a random instance while in the air, your pet will be desummoned when you get out of the instance again. This isn't much of an issue for a hunter or unholy DK who can just easily summon their pets again. But a lock usually has a 10 second cast time on their pets and having to do this over and over again becomes tedious. The alternative is to land and dismount from your flying mount before ever entering a random pug. Also tedious.

All this aside...since pets really own and having a pet is such a huge benefit in most areas of the game we all know hunters, locks and dk's really deserve these pet issues. Can't let them have it too easy, can we? ;)

Wannabe tanks - Warlock

There are actually alternatives to the regular tanking classes, warrior, dk, druid and paladin. In some parts of the game, most of the other classes work well, or are even needed, to tank something. In fact most classes have successfully tanked some end-game material. Maybe not always raid bosses, as some rogues have managed to do, but in any case some heroics. And for some raids you even need a mage (Gruuls Lair), warlock (SSC) or hunter (UBRS) to tank some part of a boss encounter in various ways.

But for this post I thought I'd look more into where the alternatives not only work as freak exceptions, but as really viable options. The LFG-tool has hindered this to some part (or nearly entirely actually) since you can't choose to join as a tank unless you count as one of the regular tank classes. This means if you ever want to tank when being an alternative class, you have to hope for either a tank that doesn't mind sharing the tanking business with you, or a tank that isn't there (i.e stepping in for a tank that has left/afked). Or collect a bunch of lowbie friends on your own server of course.

If you play the game for the very first time you'll have plenty of new stuff to keep you entertained in any case, and maybe this isn't something for you. But aiming to become a viable tank-alternative could be an interesting way to level that fifty-eleventh alt. So if you like a new take to the game, this might be something for you.

Just to clarify, the real tank classes are there for a reason of course. No matter how well you gear for it, there will be alot of content you simply can't tank for various reasons, most of it being closer to the end-game, because that is when the mobs start hitting too hard. Just so you don't get your hopes up for being able to warlock/hunter/shaman/etc tank ICC eventually. That won't happen.

Alternative tanking is highly affected on changes that are constantly made to a class. This means you can have a warlock tank Sarth 3d or a mage tank Razuvious one day (it has happened), and not the other day, simply because of the changes done to the class. Since the class isn't supposed to tank in the first place, Blizzard won't have much regard to their tankability when they apply changes to these classes.

Warlock
Tankability: approximately level 10-60ish

There are some features that make warlock a decent alternative to a "real" tank.
- First of all, they have a pet (voidwalker, alternatively felguard later on) which actually has stats as a real tank. Lots of armor and hp. The drawback of using a pet instead of a regular tank is that it's a little trickier. It requires the rest of the group to mind their threat a lot more, as a pet doesn't respond as well to new situations than a player tank can. There are alot of really sucky tanks out there however, who don't know their taunt from a banana, and compared to them I'd even say a pet tank is -better-. I say the group have to mind their threat because a Voidwalker and Felguard don't have a taunt in the real sense. That means if the pet looses aggro, he'll have a hell of a time getting it back. The skills they have simply increase their own threat, but it doesn't snatch it back from someone else, which is a significant difference.

- Secondly, the voidwalker allows the warlock itself to take a pounding. Recent buffs to the Voidwalkers Sacrifice skill allows the warlock to get a really good shield, without having to actually sacrifice the pet (which was previously the case). It removes a small amount of hp from your Voidwalker, but the ratio is really good. I don't know the exact numbers, and it differs depending on level and skill level of course, but I'd guess it's something like 1:10. That means that 100hp sacrificed from your pet gives you a shield that soaks 1000 dmg. Not bad at all. You get this skill at level 16.

- Thirdly, the talent Improved Healthfunnel in the demo tree allows your pet to regain hp and take 30% less dmg when channeled. That's alot of damage reduce, and a great way to let the pet tank hard hitting elites successfully. It was by using this talent some warlock managed to tank Sartharion 3d. While he just channeled health funnel, everyone else went bananas with dmg on the boss, using Miss Direction and the like to keep threat on the pet. Something you can't count on happening when on low levels however.

- Forthly, warlocks actually have a skill which causes a high amount of threat in Searing Pain. This means you can keep aggro on yourself at least, if necessary, eventhough you can't move this threat to your pet unfortunately.

Specs
There are two viable specs for the aspiring warlock tank. Either you put all your cards on your pet being the tank through a demonology spec, or you set out to tank stuff yourself with an affliction spec. Both have their pros and cons of course.
Demonology Pet-tank: The pet will tank through high hp and foremost high armor, something the warlock will never be able to get (except for with metamorphosis). Through a demonology spec you improve the pets stats and threatability. You will also get Metamorphosis at level 50 which allows the warlock to enter a sort of "tank mode" where they get alot higher armor and a real taunt. This buff is only up for some 30 seconds and has a 3 minute cooldown. This can be changed with some glyphs and talents, but there will still be a gap where you can't be in this form. This is where you have to use your pet instead. This spec works best against single-target hard hitting mobs, such as bosses.
Affliction Warlock-tank: A warlock can tank through huge hp-gains, which compensate for not having alot of armor. When having an affliction spec and alot of targets to use their dots on they will regain alot of hp. Combining this with the Voidwalker shield and a high hp-pool they can take quite the beating. However, being a clothie, the warlock will take big hits, and they can't fight anything that risks one-shotting them through a crit. Also if the warlock only has one target, like say a boss, the hp-gain might not be high enough to compensate for the hp-loss. Therefore an affliction spec works best against larger packs of mobs that don't hit too hard, like trash in an instance.

Gear
Important to remember is that the pet benefits from the stats of the warlock. As a tank warlock there is one really important stat to collect, whether you are demonologist or afflictionist - stamina. Also spellpower will help you with the hp-gain if you're an affliction lock. To my knowledge there is no cloth gear with defense stats on them, so there is no point in trying to be crit-immune. Like an old-school druid you have to soak the damage with big amounts of hp instead and work it so that the health you gain is bigger than the health you lose.