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A Sunnier Bear One Year Anniversary

On March 2, 2011, I posted my first blog post. I originally started this blog because I could never find any tank-centric encounter guides. It seemed like every guide I could find on the web was written by a healer and couldn’t tell me where to stand or when to taunt. So I decided to take it upon myself and write some tank-specific guides myself, starting with my very first post, Bear vs. Heroic Magmaw.

A Sunnier Bear was my third attempt at blogging. The very first, Hullo Bear, was mostly an experimental visual documentation of Sunnier’s leveling through Cataclysm.

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Team Wafflecast: Bear Roundtable

I was on the latest Team Wafflecast with several talented bear druids. We answer bear-related questions about the current state of the spec, speculate about bears in Mists of Pandaria, and other things.

I pretty much just sit in a corner and answer questions when Arielle makes me, because I’m very shy. D: There were three hardcore 25man tanks so I felt a little lonely, but I learned that 25 man requires many more tanks than 10 man. Three tanks on heroic Spine?! And other things!

Anyways, enjoy!

CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST

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How Do You Explain WoW to non-WoW players?

When I first started playing World of Warcraft, I remember telling my parents it was simply called The Burning Crusade. Why? Because World of Warcraft sounds like one of those games that’s overflowing with unnecessary violence. As someone who grew up within 5 miles of the Columbine massacre, excessively violent video games were commonly thought to cause excessive violence in the real world. Sprinkle in some religious fundamentalism, a brother fighting in a real life war, and voila! You have a situation where a game with Crusade in the title is preferable to one that implies a world full of war.

Nowadays my parents actually encourage my gaming habits (well, they encourage my blogging habits), and it turns out my fear was a little unnecessary. They actively try to understand what I’m blogging and tweeting about all the time, though in reality they have almost no clue.

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Heroic Madness of Deathwing 10 Tanking Guide

In 10 man, Heroic Madness is more difficult than Heroic Spine, and will probably remain difficult even after successive nerfs. Don’t get fooled into thinking that you’ll be done with this tier after just one or two nights of wiping, because it will probably take many more. Heroic Madness is very stressful for healers, but pretty straightforward for tanks and dps.

As with most my guides, this is intended for tanks because that’s the role I filled. I hope there are helpful things for other roles, but I am not an expert in those roles. I expect you to know the basic mechanics of the fight before diving into this guide. There are many solutions to complex boss fights like these, and the way we did it is not the only right way.

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Heroic Spine of Deathwing 10 Tanking Guide

This is a difficult fight for tanks and healers, and an extremely boring fight for damage dealers. Each phase gets progressively more intense until you finally reach the chaotic finish. It’s widely believed to be the most difficult fight in Dragon Soul because it requires highly focused dps, a lot of blood control, and lucky strings of avoidance while kiting. After all the nerfs it has received, I’d rank the 10 man version far below Heroic Madness and Heroic Warmaster, but it is still a difficult fight.

As with most my guides, this is intended for tanks because that’s the role I filled. I hope there are helpful things for other roles, but I am not an expert in those roles. I expect you to know the basic mechanics of the fight before diving into this guide. There are many solutions to complex boss fights like these, and the way we did it is not the only right way.

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I Had an Idea for MoP

Last night I had trouble sleeping because I thought of a talent I would really love to see in Mists of Pandaria and I got all excited.

Grants the druid the passive benefits of bear form even while out of bear form. While casting, the druid has immunity to spell pushback and takes less damage equal to his dodge chance for X seconds. Y minute cooldown.

So basically bears would have bear-level armor, damage reduction, and uncritability even in caster form (or cat form, or travel form). The “takes less damage equal to his dodge chance” part is the same as a Deathknight’s Army of the Dead ability, where it’s only there to compensate for the lack of avoidance while casting.

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Heroic Hagara 10 Tanking Guide

As usual, this isn’t meant to be a complete guide. I assume you already know the basic mechanics of this fight and everything here is mostly geared toward tanks.

Changes Between Normal and Heroic

  • Everything hits harder.
  • Ice Lance increases frost damage taken by 25% per hit, instead of reducing attack speed.
  • Ice Wave moves faster and there is a new snare debuff that needs to be properly taken care of if you want to stay ahead of the wave.
  • There are 8 Crystal Conductors to overload in the lightning phase. You need 2 people between each conductor to overload them.
  • You need to avoid Storm Pillars during the lightning phase, which leave a runic circle on the ground before they erupt for a large amount of nature damage.

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