Waldonnis

*shoves the epeen talk aside* This is a good direction for them to go in, really. Hunters have always suffered from weird scaling issues and ammo has frequently been where they applied the "band aid" instead of working more off of the ranged weapon. This definitely simplifies the future change to ammo as well, so I'm happy to see this alteration as a first-step.

Sorry about last night. I've been sick lately and keep having dizzy spells, so I've been resting a lot more. Unfortunately, my power flickered during a needed nap and it knocked out my alarm clock, so I didn't wake up in time.

If the above is true for most of the raid, then maybe I'm the one in the wrong raid. I'm fine with insults, but I expect people to actually pay attention during a fight and saving the jabs for afterwards so I can just tune out. As it stands now, nobody can communicate during the fights because half of the raid is busy droning on about who's "full of fail" or whatever. Ignis add tank in the pot? Can't talk because someone's making fun of someone else. Holyssa has too many debuffs and needs a taunt? Oops, sorry, getting stepped on by someone talking about how many times someone else died. I don't expect complete silence, but come on, have some sense. It's just wasting everyone's time and, frankly, is no different than sitting around RP'ing, except with repair bills. At this point, I'm having a hard time even finding the energy to log in for this raid these days. It was fun back in SSC/TK because the goals were more important than the personal jabs. People worked together and saved the jokes for farm status or in between fights. Now, the jokes and jabs are more important than the raid, and it's more of a competition than anything else. I'm sorry, I raid to kill bosses and experience fights, not to sit around a 25-person knitting circle talking smack...but maybe that's just me.

People will inevitably disperse or spread out more as the fight progresses, simply because people will move in different directions. I doubt clumping up will really do much other than increasing overall damage taken by the initial tick(s) of the AoE blue fire (more people getting hit). Razorscale only targets one person for the AoE and uses their location at the time as the target spot for the attack, meaning only one person could be proactive (and the rest would have to either react to the blue fire or react to the movement of the proactive person, who may even just be moving for other reasons). This could work well if a clump moved as a group, however. Frankly, "moving as a group" seemed to be challenging for most with Archimonde, so I doubt it'll suddenly be simple now. I have mixed feelings about doubling up on the same instance. On one side, you bring up a good point - it does increase familiarity and comfort with the fights for those that do. Loot is an obvious side-benefit as well. There are some detractors for doing so, though, most notably that it reduces the "burned-out and bored" lifespan of many who do this. I saw this a lot in Naxx from the people that were raiding the place 4-5 nights per week and couldn't stop expressing their boredom before long. Also, one thing that I've noticed lately is that there is a lot of important information that isn't communicated to those not in the 10-man Ulduar runs, and is almost "assumed to be already known" by those in them. I do a lot of research and preparation before fights, so I'm familiar with a lot of things, but I don't know the specifics of the strategy used in the 10-mans that seem to be taken for granted knowledge-wise when we face newer bosses. If you're going to double-up on Ulduar in hopes of gaining more familiarity with the fights, be sure to actually share what you learn instead of just assuming others already know what you do. Don't get frustrated when the rest of us don't learn it all as fast either...we don't have the extra practice time that you have had.

Only Morgh can change permissions on the guild bank, so there's nothing we can do about that for the time being.

Is it not challenging now? I mean, we've only seen four bosses and still can't get Razorscale down without some issues (we won't talk about hard modes too). I don't think the word "easy" fits Ulduar, even with the changes...

There's free loot in Ulduar outside of FL? Didn't seem like it to me last night *looks at his repair bill*

Well, looking over the roster for tonight, it looks like around a quarter of the raid cannot make it tonight which is too much to replace this close to reset. Sadly, I'm going to have to cancel the run tonight. We've had a string of sudden cancellations which is no one's fault really (stuff comes up, that can't be avoided)...it'll pass. A note: Please try to at least respond to the calendar invite in advance. Looking at Wednesday's invites (two days from now!), I still have seven people that haven't responded, making it impossible to line up replacements in advance (or even know if I need them to begin with).

Hehehe... Just a reminder, when reviewing your damage done and dps, don't include trash pretty much ever. Bosses are the only ones that matter for a number of reasons, the best of which is that it's a better indicator of your potential vs. real damage output. Not only are bosses a consistent level (82 heroic, 83 raid), but they're also long enough fights in many cases to establish a good sample size (heroics less so than raid) and frequently have dynamics more "friendly" to predictable damage output. Movement-heavy fights are another issue and will hamper you less as affliction, but they still hamper any caster's damage output (melee has this problem frequently). This is why Patchwerk is considered the closest thing to a "target dummy" for dps classes. No movement at all and no class is favoured due to fight dynamics (at least from a dps standpoint). It's pretty much just a several-minute-long nukefest and good for breaking down your rotations/cooldown use. Looking at overall damage or dps including trash will yield VASTLY different results most of the time, even with the same exact people around you in the same instance. As for buffs, 25-man buffs will generally increase your damage noticeably. It's not uncommon for me to see a 20-25% increase in my damage output with 25-man buffs vs. the limited subset we can achieve with 10 people. Additionally, the extra 15 people and class variety often provide debuffs/class synergies that benefit you even more than you could get in most decently-balanced 10-man raids. A good example of this is when I bring Tyrandius into a caster-heavy group. One debuff that I have increases magical damage taken by the target, so it inflates caster dps a bit (and their threat, but that's easy to deal with usually). When we don't have a similarly-spec'ed DK around, the caster dps is a bit lower. Not to pimp the target dummies again, but a good rule of thumb is: if you get inconsistent results on a dummy, it's your rotation or timing causing some dps issues; if you get consistent results on a dummy and are solid on your rotation timing, it's the raid's composition or fight mechanics causing the variance. There are cases where that rule isn't exactly 100% true, but those are more corner cases than anything (starting a fight with trinkets on cooldown and things like that). I could get more into WWS/WMO analysis and how I approach it if you'd like...may help to figure out what's going on. It also may be worth making a WWS/WMO account of your own and post test session logs so you can inspect them a bit more easily (I do this on my account at times, although I have written some log parsers to do most of it locally).

Big bug alert with dual specs. It seems that when you swap repeatedly, certain talents will be "unlearned", sometimes without refunding the point costs. Both Wenvalor and Romala noticed this so far today (I somehow had improved MS without a point in MS). It doesn't seem to be restricted to any specific classes either, and many have noticed their specs slowly "decay" after repeated swapping. The same is being seen when entering/leaving instances at times as well, but I haven't been able to determine any predictable pattern there yet. Apparently, swapping again refunds the points, should they not have been refunded before, so that you can spend them again. The real oddity is that some of the abilities that are seemingly dropped are still usable in most cases. *shrugs* As with anything new, expect bugs in the first week or so...

We did very well on Monday and actually better than I expected! Great job, everyone That being said, get your add-ons squared away and consumables ready for tonight's adventure before start time so we can launch our assault on-time. A few notes and observations from last week: I fail at logging, so no WWS/WMO for the Monday run. Sorry about that, but I've got it fixed this time around. For the folks that weren't in my 10-man, it's VERY likely that we do things a little differently than you are used to on some of the bosses (and there will be differences still even for the people that were in the 10-man). Suggestions should be made in whispers, if possible, as mentioning how other raids did it in the past over TS just adds confusion 9 times out of 10. It's not that we don't value your opinion, we're just trying to keep everyone on the same page. Also on the strategy note, it's likely that we're going to pick certain tactics for fights that lead to wipes. Wipes happen and sometimes we just need to all get used to a certain strategy before tossing it in the "bad idea" can. Not every first attempt will be a kill and there are times where we need to measure if our raid is capable of doing things in certain ways at different gearing levels. There are some subtle differences that we may forget to cover between what you're used to on 10-man and what we see in 25. Anub's damage output and increased swarm range are just two examples of this. Just do your best to adapt to some of these when they come up. There are going to be nights or times when Maube has to step away for baby duty. During those times, I'll be taking the reins temporarily. My leadership style is quite different than hers, so expect a different tenor during those times....but we both have agreed upon the same direction and strategies, so nothing will change in that regard. Don't goof and go with another raid on Tuesdays (or Thursdays, depending on if you attend both nights)! We had to swap out a few people this past week due to raid ID conflicts from people attending the Tuesday raid as a replacement. With the release of Ulduar, this should be less of a problem within the guild raids, but it's something to watch out for. If you're unsure about how raid IDs work and when resets happen, feel free to contact me outside of the raid and I can explain the whole system. For now, we're focusing on Naxx, but we will likely expand the scope to include Sartharion as well before long. In general, though, don't think of any of the above as serious criticism....think of them more as "just things to note". In all, everyone did a really great job and I was quite happy with how well everyone adapted and was working together. From talking with a few on Tuesday after the patch, I'm hoping to see some improvements as well simply from some of the new spec options available for some of the classes (many were pretty happy, although we fury warriors seem to be a grumpy bunch). Oh, one other note, start working on getting your frost resist pieces crafted if you don't have them made yet. At the pace we're going, I wouldn't doubt that we'll be starting on Sapphiron before long and it's better to be prepared in advance than scramble at the last minute. I can personally make every armour type's frost resist pieces, but there are several others in the raid that can handle requests as well. Don't be shy about asking any of us for our crafting expertise. Many have probably read that frost resist isn't really necessary on Sapphiron, which is true...for an experienced and geared raid...but it makes it MUCH MUCH easier when a raid's still learning the fight and not quite at a super-high gearing level. In short, get it made, including the tanks (only the person tanking Sapphiron doesn't use any frost resist, but you're all just as likely to not be tanking him on any given week). Time allowing, help each other out in gathering materials for this as well (miners help non-miners with saronite, skinners with leather, etc). Every piece of frost resist crafted helps the whole raid, so helping each other out has the same benefit

I may stick it out for a week or two to see how things pan out. People should play the specs that they enjoy, but it seems like a good chunk of the population has shifted into the "spec this way or GTFO" mindset. For me, I enjoy fury as much as I enjoyed arms before Wrath, so I'm happy either way and will just adapt and figure out what I want to do as I go along. To me, this type of change gives me more options instead of less I've never played Romala because I wanted to "top the meters" anyway. I think you'll see a few warriors start going back to prot/tanking, believe it or not (not many, but some), especially at lower gear levels. Distribution-wise, you're probably right in that many at "middle" levels of gearing will swing to arms quickly, though.

FYI, I quickly jotted down the differences tonight between 10- and 25-man from a tanking perspective, but it's too rough to post quite yet. I'll be going over them tomorrow with my raid, but will make a point to catch Saephere with them as well. We're also likely going to do things differently than many of you are used to, so don't be surprised when you hear directions that differ from how you've been doing them in 10-man. Some are just different (and often just make things a touch easier or more direct), but some also take the 25-man differences into account that you haven't had to deal with before. If the healers want a low-down as well, feel free to shoot me a whisper and I'd be happy to go over the big changes from their perspective as well. Overall healing-wise, though, just think "bosses hit harder" and that sums up most of it One other thing just to note: we do plan on skipping as much trash as possible to keep the time/deaths down. You'll get the hang of it in no time, I'm sure and it will help us in working towards the goal of a one-night clear We also will likely continue to pull while loot is being rolled on, so be ready for a quick pace. I can't speak for Maube on this one, but I personally think that achievement-seeking needs to take a back-seat to getting through the place completely in a night and getting more gear spread around...put any achievement desires on the back burner until we're farming Kel'Thuzad. We can always come back later anyway and get those done with Ulduar gear if enough people are interested at worst case

Looks like a good list. One thing to consider is making a wishlist of alternate weapons. BoH is Kel'Thuzad loot, and not always common enough for you to just get two of them quickly. Ret paladins and DPS DKs will want them, and they make great threat tanking weapons for DKs as well, so they're often hotly contested. Armageddon and The Jawbone would likely drop a few times prior to KT anyway and would make good upgrades overall. You're correct about weapon mastery helping in the expertise department, on a side note. My typical strategy with wishlists is to make several stages of them, to ensure that I always have the stats that I need along the way. Always equipping best-in-slot gear when you first get it often leaves you short on hit or another important stat, and that would often drive down your performance. There were times in BT that I took upgrades, but couldn't actually equip them for over a month because I lost too much by doing so until I got stuff further in (seems odd, but it's actually pretty common). It's a little more difficult to do this in Naxx, due to the nature of the instance's wings, but doing some planning per wing or even as simple as "pre vs. post-Sapphiron" is a good idea. Granted, peak performance in Naxx isn't a big deal overall, so a big upgrade sometimes wins, but it never hurts to plan if you have the time to do so. The big thing, though, is not to pass on stuff waiting for that "ideal" drop...which often never or very rarely comes. I've been running Naxx for awhile now and have never seen the best tanking weapon available to DKs drop at all. Random loot is random, I guess, but waiting didn't stop me from jumping all over the BoH in the meantime since it was a huge upgrade for me (and still in the top three for tanking weapons). We also haven't seen enough Betrayers in that raid to provide a pair to anyone (although most of us have one). Oh, one other thing...be sure to note the changes that attempt to make strength more desirable than pure AP coming in 3.1. I don't know how it would apply to your list since I only took a brief glance, but it's something to consider.

Congrats on Sarth+1 kill tonight (Shadron, no less), as well as getting to phase 3 of Malygos (and phase 2!) for the first time Honestly, you all kicked butt tonight and it was a great night that just confirms to me that you are all more than ready for the transition to the 25-man raid. I'm very proud of all of you and how well the raid has come together over these past weeks. I've had a blast leading everyone through what we've done and I hope you have had as much fun as I have Happy Birthday! Enjoy the Twilight Assist achievements that you all got tonight...you definitely earned it! Happy Birthday!

*attaches a chariot to Morgh and Aleis, then grabs the whip* Start running!

Three tanks should be fine. A resto druid would be fantastic, though, especially for Malygos...but a moonkin would be great too As we discussed, six healers should be fine...and as long as we have two priests of any spec, we're set on hard class requirements for all of the fights (two priests are semi-required for Raz; there are other ways to do it with one, but those ways are a pain). Above six healers, adding either another damage dealer or healer offers equal gain....but if we need Adranna, I'm game. In the current Misfits raid, I'll be slowly working with Wen and having her main tank more of the fights to prepare for the transition (familiarity and comfort are huge). I'm a believer in spreading the tanking duties around (and thus the knowledge/comfort). Also, I'll be doing some shuffling on Razuvious to give our current priests a chance to learn the mind control part...may as well get used to doing it now. I recommend the same to other 10-man raid participants. For those that are interested, start working together sooner rather than later. Party up with each other and run some heroics to get used to working together, as well as work on any remaining gear that you'd like out of them (particularly help the tanks if they need anything). Also, start getting the stuff together for frost resist gear if you don't have it. It's very helpful for learning Sapphiron, and much better to have it ready than scramble at the last minute. I can make every piece of frost resist for any armour type, so feel free to poke me for the crafting part. When it comes to replacements for the Misfits raid, I'll start pulling exclusively from the list of folks that are interested in the 25-man to get more people familiar with the entire instance and spread the 10-man gear around. Side-note, I'm very proud of our current 10-man raiders for their first one-night clearing of Naxx. You all did so well Given how well we've done, I have full confidence that we'll be clearing heroic Naxx in no time! Oh, also, I'll happily provide info to anyone in Shelah's run on how we handle fights. I've already talked extensively with Saeph and Perthes in the past to give them some tips, but I'm available to anyone who wants more info. Some of fights do change in 25-man, so if you need info on those things as well, just let me know.

Be sure that you only look at boss fights when you're evaluating damage output. Trash-heavy instances/raids will actually work against "overall dps/damage done" for an affliction warlock, since 99% of the trash out there doesn't live long enough for dots to run their course even on one target. Boss fights are long enough to allow affliction to actually use a rotation, though, and that's where you'll see it shine more. For trash, I always tended to just shadowbolt spam in the past with maybe a dot or two on each of the mobs...or just AoE'ed with SoC (not sure how that works out now, but shadowbolt spam seems to be still reasonable). Frankly, trash dps doesn't matter at all and isn't something to consider when it comes to figuring out if you're doing well...no matter what others say. Another thing, always use the same tools to measure dps and damage output (Recount measures dps differently than WWS, for example...always compare apples and apples, basically). I have my Recount set up to only save boss fight segments so that I can quickly reference them even a few bosses later without having to thumb through trash segments. When I use WWS or WMO, I only look at the specific bosses or just the "All Bosses" report for comparisons. Understanding how your tool of choice actually determines "damage per second" is important in any case. For affliction builds, I highly recommend looking at metrics like DoT uptime and the damage breakdowns (WMO has a nice pie chart for the breakdown) ...then compare those to other warlocks in other reports to see what they're doing differently. Last thing, and probably most important, is to make sure that you're not clipping your dots. There are two spells that you absolutely don't want to clip ever: CoA and immolate (if used). In CoA's case, the heaviest damage ticks come at the end, so refreshing it too early will hurt your damage measurably in longer fights. Immolate's even worse in that the back-end mechanics prevent immolate from being "refreshed" at times....the direct damage portion will hit, but the dot portion won't reapply. This tends to happen when the previous application was done while a trinket or proc buff was in effect (the newer application will be "lesser", so it won't overwrite). DoT timers help, but it takes practice. I'll dig around for specific rotations if needed, but it's probably best to plug your gear and spec into Leulier's spreadsheet (linked on my blog) and play around with it a bit with rotations/gems/stats/etc. I know he's got some bug in his drawers about publishing updates right now, but it should be close enough. Spending some quality time with your friendly neighbourhood target dummy is also very recommended. It takes time and practice to get rotation timing down, especially for affliction builds, and it's easier to do it outside of a raid setting. Again, though, be sure not to compare target dummy results with raid results, as the buffs and circumstances in raids will differ greatly with target dummy time.

It's helpful if we take too long on Shadron, but my cooldowns can handle it if we're on-target. Also, most of the strategy guides don't take into account a few of the DK perks (the Spellshattering runeforge, for example) or the result of resist enchants/flasks because they're meant to be "all around guides" rather than speaking specifically to the tank's gearing and spec. I'm hoping that I've eliminated most of the harsh edges via my respec and partial regearing/re-enchanting for that specific fight. Overall, I'm not getting spiked all that badly so far, even during the heavy damage phase of the fight. At best, I'm resisting 30% of the incoming damage (lowest seems to be 20%), and the brunt of the remaining damage is being mitigated by IBF/BA/AMS/AMZ. Realistically, a standard PW:S or hand of sacrifice should be plenty if I'm out of cooldowns to pop or we run long on Shadron. To give you an idea, the largest breath I've taken so far appeared to be around 42k, and that was without any of my mitigation stuff active and after a wipe was already inevitable. Having a disc priest is much more valuable on 10-man Sarth3D, though, due to the availability of healers in a smaller raid and the lack of 25-man buffs/inter-class synergies. I'd say Pain Suppression would make it that much easier during the trouble phase even in 25-man, but until I'm getting insta-gibbed regularly, I don't think we need to make any swaps that way (unless someone really wants to). Also, given the cooldown on Pain Suppression, I'd hold off on casting it until I had exhausted my own cooldowns regardless (I'd call for it).

No, actually they're not way off of the point. There were problems beyond people dying to avoidable damage and that's some of what those posts were trying to address. Confusion as to what the goals are, what the effects of the debuffs are, and other factors all contributed to things not going well. It's not as simple as saying "If less people died, we would've had it", since it's patently untrue, given some of the whispers that I got during the raid from people who were confused on a few points about the fight. People could've been avoiding void zones and flame tsunami like pros, but we still had issues with adds demolishing tanks and the damage from Vesperon's acolyte to get accustomed to. There's something that you have to understand about this fight: every aspect of it could potentially screw an attempt, including things that are beyond our control (Sarth can time his breaths so that I can't cover them with cooldowns, for instance). Knowing the mechanics will go much farther than simply saying "stop dying". I agree that preventable deaths shouldn't be happening, but I'd rather see improvement beyond just that and far less confusion in the coming attempts.

Holy nailed the big points above that I was banging my head on my desk about last night when I realised that folks didn't know them. As for Sarth himself, there are a few things to know about tanking him that most probably have no clue about, but is important regardless because it's directly related to how well things go with the drakes. Probably the most notable is that, with the combined debuffs from Vesperon and Shadron, his breath attack can hit for around 74k before mitigation. That's no typo, folks, 74,000. Am I sporting 75,000 health to survive this? Nope, but I do have some (incredibly overpowered) cooldowns to help out. The trick for me is timing them properly while doing the same dances that the rest of the raid is doing. Void zones can and do spawn under me sometimes, and I'm not immune to flame tsunami either, so don't think you're alone in this. I honestly only have enough cooldowns to last for about 45secs once the big breaths start, after which I need external help (priest shields, HoS, etc) which I need to call for on TS...senseless chatter or poking fun at folks during the encounter will lead to a guaranteed wipe if I can't do this, so save that chatter for later. I have macros set up to raid warning this kind of info, but we're already being bombarded by boss mods and such, so I need TS as clear as I can get it during that (hopefully short) time. The reasons for having no dps on Sartharion in the beginning are two-fold. For one, I respec for the fight to improve my survivability...at the expense of a massive amount of threat generation. Basically, my threat sucks so unless you want to take a turn at tanking Sartharion as dps, don't start on him until after the drakes are dead. Secondly, there are portions of the fight where I can't hit Sartharion AT ALL. Between Sarth's full immunity during a portion of the fight, and adding the damage from Vesperon's acolyte if I actually attack him while that debuff is up, I can't afford adding even more incoming damage to those nasty breaths. So I have a gap where I'm generating absolutely no threat at all and have to focus exclusively on survival. Ideally, once the drakes are down, Holy or Ascoli could (and probably should) taunt Sarth off of me for the final Sarth-only portion of the fight, but by that time, I should have built up a reasonable amount of threat lead to handle it either way (please let me know if you're going to do this before actually doing it, tanks). Any and all resist buffs are extremely helpful to both me and the other tanks, most notably fire resist auras and the like. I'm not just being crabby when asking for it...they can mean the difference between me getting breath-gibbed or living during the hardest part of the fight tanking-wise. I'm already wearing some fire resist for the fight and using a resistance flask, but it's not all that great on its own. This helps the other tanks as well and I highly recommend for them to at least use a resistance flask of some sort if they're getting killed quickly by the adds or drakes' breath attacks. I have a lot of abilities to make up for slightly lower FR, but the other tanks don't and I'd rather not risk it for me regardless when it's not hard to get that aura clicked. For the raid, always bear in mind that until Vesperon is down, we ALL have 25% less maximum health than normal. Couple that with Shadron's 100% boost to fire damage and that means one thing: get those drakes down in a hurry. Tenebron is the LEAST dangerous. His aura amplifies shadow damage, but since he lands first, it's nice to get him out of the way early and lessen the damage from Vesperon's acolyte. When (not if) you read up on this fight, take particular note of the debuffs and what they do when stacked on each other, then think about what goes on in the fight. Lots of elemental adds? They're doing double damage thanks to Shadron's debuff...to a tank that's got 25% less health. Vesperon's acolyte is no joke either. Until we kill him, keep in mind that the damage that you do will incur damage on you...if you're going to die from it, be smart and don't pray that a healer will save you while you keep going. Dead dps does no damage, so bandage or give your healers a chance to catch up and get to you. As many found out, AoE while that acolyte is up is not a good idea. The most important thing I can convey is my usual broken record "READ UP ON THE FIGHT". This isn't a fight that folks can walk into and just "lolwut" at explanations, then succeed. It's complicated and has some very specific elements to it that make it much more difficult than two drakes. Also, since a chunk of this encounter is a dps/healing race, don't be cheap...bring and use elixirs/flasks/food/voodoo dolls/whatever. Oh, and insert the usual "blue stuff and giant walls of fire are bad" comment here.... We have a few "benchmarks" on the drakes portion that we have yet to reach. As you read about the encounter, keep those in mind and how you can do your part to reach them. It's a team effort, so put aside the snarky crap about who stood in void zones...pull it together, focus, and work together.

Tyrandius is saved every week for the time being, but aside from that, I could make it Sundays. Right now, I'd say Romala is the closest to being 25-man ready (fury warrior), but Adranna or Jaryndis could probably work as well healer-wise (Adranna's the more geared of the two). Monday is out for me, however, since my 10-man Naxx is Monday/Wednesday.

<-- hermit that hates the big burning ball of nuclear fusion in the sky

I somewhat agree on the warrior tanking front. It's not so much that they can't, it's just that it's usually easier to do on some of the other tanking classes (paladins and DKs notably). I still think protection needs some tweaks, but it hasn't seemed too bad overall from a threat perspective in my experience (including AoE situations). Paladins trivialise some encounters, DKs for others, druids still (for now) have their own specialties, and warriors even have a few that they do better on...but in general, all tanking classes are at about the same level for 99.9999% of the content out there right now from what I've seen. That being said, I don't even own a shield on Romala, so I don't have any idea on tanking rotations or suggestions, but I can probably point out a few blogs and forums that should have some good advice. Tankspot would be my first stop...the forums there are actually very informative and better than EJ most of the time. There are a few other places that I frequent, but they tend to be more "encounter-specific" when it comes to advice. I think the hardest thing for most warriors that I've talked to has been adapting to some of the changes to tanking and some of their abilities (the addition of glyphs alone has changed things for many). That, coupled with the fact that crowd control and focus fire seem to be bad words these days, is making it harder for many warriors to get a feel for their threat generation and handling AoE situations. I think the only thing I could offer up as advice is: practice, practice, then practice more. I frequently grab a couple of Northrend elites and try things out with Tyr...and it's improved my tanking rotation and threat generation significantly. Personally, I even intentionally throw away my normal rotation and try new things from time to time...just to see if I can find a better way to do it. I tend to do this stuff outside of pressure situations (like outside of instances or raids) to give me more freedom to go nuts and probably die without affecting anyone else...and believe me, I mess up more often than not If you feel more comfy with a healer around, let me know and I'd be happy to bring Adranna or Jaryndis out to lend a hand (or even Tyr if you want to compare threat to another tank, which can also be helpful).

Feel free to rotate me completely out for the undermanning ones, as I have no interest at all in the meta achievements or even most of the raiding ones at all. That being said, there are a few ways to improve the odds of getting some of the more challenging ones... Shocking is more likely done with a smaller group, so the undermanned nights would be good for that one. Also, modify the strategy to move in a box and position itself in more of a "corners of the box", allowing for more room to move away from either side without getting squished against the walls as easily. Spore Loser is obvious and is best done with a full group. Taiden will also have to abstain from his addiction to Army of the Dead...they do kill spores. Same goes for any abilities that could do damage to something hitting a player, including thorns, imps' fire shield, mages' molten armour, etc. The hardest from a raid performance standpoint will likely be a 3min Patchwerk. Honestly, the easiest that I've even heard of this being done is by one of two methods: swapping some healers out for dps, or going with one tank and *all* ranged dps (along with healers, of course...this is likely not an option for this raid). If we attempt this one, *full* buffs will likely be helpful, including optimal flasks/elixirs that most of us don't bother with currently. The hardest overall will be The Immortal....but that's obvious. ...and that's just Naxx. 6min Malygos (You Don't Have An Eternity) is possible, but may require a strategy shift to ensure sparks are stacked as much as possible. Short-handing Malygos (A Poke In The Eye) will also be extremely rough barring the same strategy shift. Spark stacking is essential for both of these and the "luck of the draw" spawn points won't cut it for the latter achievement given that the raid already hovers close to the enrage timer even with a full compliment.