Gladiator's Viability

  I've been reading forum posts, reddit comments and trade chat, and the general consensus is that Gladiator DPS is good enough, and you can play whatever you want until you get to mythic. Alternatively, if you spec it you're a scrub, get out of the raid, you can't DPS as tank.

  Both are wrong.

  First off, a Warrior in Gladiator Stance is not a tank. While some of the survivability of Prot is retained, it isn't significantly greater than Fury or Arms. Shield Charge replaces Shield Block, and Shield Barrier is very weak without Resolve, so Prot's active mitigation is absent in Gladiator Stance. Gladiator does still have Demoralizing Shout, Shield Wall and Last Stand (as well as much higher armor and the ability to block), so they're able to take some hits, but not for long.

  So Gladiator is not a proper tank, but is it a proper DPS? Let's see what the sims say:

Random Ramblings: WoW Notes, Roll Call, Unemployed

WoW Notes

I like to keep a WordPad of notes handy for WoW. A recent addition is this macro I found on wowhead:

/run if(true)then local q={"The Thunderlord Sage","Explosive Discoveries","Amulet of Rukhmar","Gutrek's Cleaver","The Infected Orc","The Artificer"};for i= 1,6,1 do local a,b,c=GetAchievementCriteriaInfo(9825,i);print(q[i],": ",a," = ",c)end;end

This checks to see what Harrison Jones quests a character has done.

I also keep some paper notes on my desk, one of which I used for almost a year:

Rik and Skeer cannot be tanked by the same tank due to debuffs, same with Kil and Xaril. Rik and Korv should be different tanks because Korv will stun while Rik applies a debuff. Karoz and Iyyuk are switched from their initial priority. I usually started on Skeer, so I underlined Korv, Iyyuk and Kilruk because those are my taunt targets.

Tank 1 starts on Rik, Tank 2 on Skeer. DPS kills Rik then Skeer, then Korv, with Tank 2 taunting Korv and facing him away from others. DPS kills Hisek, then Xaril, with Tank 1 taunting Xaril. DPS kills Kaz then Iyyuk, with Tank 2 taunting Iyyuk. Finally, DPS kills Karoz, then Kilruk, with Tank 2 taunting Kilruk.

Between my 5 tanks, I have done this 31 times. It's ugly, but it worked.

Roll Call

I never did finish the Alt Appreciation project. I got to Paladin and got distracted, which is too bad, because my Priest is one of my favorite alts. I'm going to do this again, but I'm calling it Roll Call. I'm going to go through my characters in order of time /played and do one big post on that character, their history and stats, my thoughts on the class, and generally anything that come up when I think about that character.

I've got one of each class above 90 and they're in 3 groups:

On Ally-Proudmoore I have my DK, Priest and Mage, each with fully developed garrisons and professions. My DK and Priest are raid ready (671 and 654 ilevel), and my Mage has dipped into a bit of PvP. This is where most of my gold is as well, about 278k.

On Ally-Durotan I have my Hunter, Shaman, Rogue and Warrior, with my Warrior at 100 and 645 ilevel. I also have professions and garrisons developing and about 30k gold.

On Horde-Proudmoore I have my Paladin, Monk, Warlock and Druid, each at level 91 with garrison resources and professions slowly building up. I don't have much gold between them, (about 1k), since I'm heavily invested in speculation, so supplying daily cooldowns is a thrifty endeavor. I also have various bank alts that post glyphs, transmogs and crafted items.

It can seem overwhelming to have 11 garrisons to manage, but the important thing is to remember that it's all optional. Sometimes all I do on my DK, Priest and Mage is profession cooldowns, dwarven bunker daily, JC or Alch daily, and emptying/restocking the mine cache (since I have an abundance of Draenic Stone). The herb garden and mine are just a convenient form of gathering. It might seem like easy gold left ungathered, but so is all the ore and herbs out in Draenor. It's OK to not do everything everyday. There's certainly a large initial time investment, but once followers are leveled and geared and buildings are upgraded, it's easy to maintain.

Unemployed

I've been unemployed for a month now, while not being able to afford it for a week. The people at my apartment office have been more than gracious giving me time to catch up on rent, but other bills are piling up and I'm getting turned down for flipping burgers. What makes it worse is that over the last 6 months, a series of roommates all bailed on me after they got behind on bills, about $1,500 altogether. It wasn't all craigslist roommates either, but co-workers, and even fellow veterans. Some even stole from me when they left. I got caught up on bills each time they did, but now I don't know what to do.

I don't usually like to drag real life worries into WoW, but this one is a potential WoW-killer for me. I might go homeless at the end of this month. It feels kind of strange playing while knowing that soon I might not log back in for a while, if ever. I've stopped using mailbox storage and adjusted my AH posting habits so that I can quickly clear mailboxes if I have to. I'm not on a raid team mostly because I'm marking full availability on job applications, but also because I don't know when my power will get cut off.

I have so much time to play now, but I feel kind of guilty about playing at all while unemployed. It just doesn't seem right, even though it's not a detriment, but even a motivating factor towards getting stabilized. If I want to keep playing, I have to get caught up. It might seem weird that continuing to play WoW is a more real motivator to me than maybe sleeping under a bridge, but I've been through worse.