So I Was Going To...

...write this fabulous post on if it was possible for a fresh 80 to tank ToC regular with a normal bunch and reap the rewards. I have this problem though. My guild doesn't let me do things like that. Yes, My fresh 80 butt was dragged into ToC kicking and screaming, under geared, to tank a few nights ago. I can tell you my health was about 17k, my defense was 480ish, and I was in mostly i-Level 170 and lower blues. I was enchanted and specced, sort of. I knew I wasn't ready.

But my friend insisted. So, I got up in front of the bosses after the joust and I failed miserably. I couldn't hold aggro, I wasn't using all the tools available to me, I stunk in more than just the gear category. I apologized, we lost a group member, and I put Shawndra in the inn in the Tournament grounds to think while I brought out Rowena to try and fix things. My friend helped with things too, making a cloak, enchanting a few items with defense and stamina, making a leg patch for me and some stamina patches for some other parts of my wardrobe. After a serious make over, Shawndra was now sporting a more healthy 22k health and a bit more defense and armor. While they looked for another body to fill our vacant spot, I reorganized my toolbar and found a few new tricks I wasn't using, and we started all over again. It went a lot smoother this time, with me not tanking in battle stance (I wasn't the first time either, but the pug we had before insisted I was), using vigilance on one of our overgeared members, and adding charge to my defense bar (I was specced for it, might as well use it in that stance instead of switching and confusing people).

It's been a long time since I tanked anything serious with Shawndra. Even back then, I was really insecure about my abilities. I tanked because we needed a tank. I'd like to get past the point where I grind my teeth and stare at my buttons, being so careful using all my threat generating and damage reducing cooldowns that I miss what the boss looks like. I don't want to be so afraid that I'm going to screw up the instance or raid for everyone else every time I pull, that I lose a mob staring at my cooldowns.

So, I guess I'll have to get more practice so I am no longer unsure of myself. Delgada is officially shelved as I focus on gearing Shawndra, who is coming along fabulously. The reason she is coming along so well is because KNR members are starting to return to the keys. Experience points in PvP and I imagine the Icecrown Citadel patch play a small factor in their returns. Others return from boredom with Aion, while others have no reason. I say, the more the merrier! We have had enough to field an instance group most nights, and when we haven't, we have seen others catching up with their characters of choice. I'm hoping in the next month to see enough on to run a 10 man, even if it's Burning Crusade content. I miss the guild getting together for a common cause. Perhaps it is time for an old school pirate pvp party. There are new boats to take over!

So, in conclusion, no, you cannot tank ToC in the random gear you were leveling in. Go buy yourself a few crafted and bind on equip pieces and get some health and defense boosts. Go quest in Icecrown for some of the items you can get there. Consider it a heroic level dungeon, because that is really what it is. Heroic content for a tank or a healer more often than not requires you to be almost at the gear level of the instance. Now, if you should decide to run the instance as dps and hope for the dribbles of gear the tank doesn't need, then you go right ahead. I'll just bat my eyelashes at my new favorite healer and see about another run. Shawndra still needs a trinket!

Shawndra Returns!

I pulled Shawndra out of the mothballs to try and get the Halloween achievements done. Why Shawndra and not my latest loves, Anselma or Halinka of the Alliance? Because the Horde of KNR seem to be rising out of the ashes, again. Being that Delgada is the guild mistress, a representative should at least be on for the members. Delgada did all that Hallow's End stuff last year, so she stepped back to let Shawndra try and get hers done. Shawndra did very well, but in the end lost to the RNG boss. No Sinister Squashling means no Sinister Calling achievement, and it was all she had left. She did get her helmet, however. Better luck next year.

Since Shawndra had been dusted off for the event, a little play time was in order. Shawndra was sitting at the end of 74 when I started playing with her again, and trick or treating in all of Azeroth and Outland got her into 75. While she was out, she did some questing, and by the end of the event, she was 76. Somewhere in that time period she was given the Cold Weather Flying tome and a pair of heirloom shoulders by Delgada (with the knowledge that she would be sharing with Anselma the blood elflette paladin), and gifted the money for dual specialization. Shawndra loves her primary specialty as a Titan's Grip fury warrior, but felt it was in the interests of many of the returning members to have a secondary specialization as a tank. She was a pretty good one before Northrend was discovered, but was still a little afraid that she would let her group down when she was called to take the lead.

She was asked yesterday to tank Drak'tharon Keep. I started the instance with an announcement that I had not tanked since Karazhan, and to please watch their step. Shawndra pulled, and surprisingly only lost aggro for a second on a stray mob that one of the dps decided to take care of out of order. Doesn't everyone know to assist the tank's target? The mob was taunted and put back into place, and the rest of the run was pretty ho hum. Shawndra, despite her admitted rustiness, seemed to be keeping aggro pretty well, and the healer didn't seem to be losing a whole lot of mana healing. Of course, it helped that the healer was 79. Shawndra noted in party chat that one of the dps was complaining that the tank out-damaged them on a fight. I grinned. At the end of the instance, a pair of plate pants dropped, which, after close inspection, were disenchanted. It is amazing how long Shawndra's low level raiding gear has lasted her into this expansion! Even her tanking gear is mostly from Kharazan and badges.

After the run, I asked in guild chat if I had been terrible. The healer said I was the easiest tank he had had to heal yet. My buddy, the best death knight tank ever, and part time warrior, said I had held aggro fine. I was so excited! I had tanked my first successful regular Northrend instance. Woot!!

Later on, Shawndra went to Dragonblight and did the Wrathgate, then went to battle for the Undercity. The Battle for the Undercity is a great boost to any character's self esteem, as their dps gets a boost of at least 10 times the normal. Special abilities make themselves available more often, and rage bars never empty. Not only that, but I love the lore that is presented. Varian is an ass. If he took a few minutes to get aquainted with Thrall, he would realize that they were in the same situation. Thrall made the best of a bad situation, and Varian became a bigotted jerk too quick to jump to conclusions. Shawndra threw a rude gesture at him as he was ported to safety by Jaina Proudmoore. She then packed up her axes, nodded to Thrall and Sylvanas, and returned to Northrend.

Shawndra is back. I'm gonna have fun getting into the mobs faces again.

Anselma

It's been a while since I brought up my human paladin, Anselma. She had been sitting on my husband's account, an unfortunate pawn waiting out her time until she could be moved back to my account. She was originally moved because she was the only free alliance character above level 55 I had available to move so that my hubby could make a death knight on one of the servers I was enjoying at the time. The death knight is just a name on an unplayed character list now. Anselma, on the other hand, is enjoying some playtime as the time I had to raid is just a happy memory.

Anselma was 55 when I moved her back to my account and to my Alliance home, Shadowsong. Today, she is sitting pretty at 66. Protection AoE leveling is fun! Nesingwary thinks I need practice hunting? HAH! I took on 4 of those clefthoof beasties and emerged triumphant, skins slung over my shoulder and meat packed for shipping. Rock elementals gone wild? Selma's your gal. She'll even break their rocky remains into dust and crystalline debris, just so you don't have to send clean up crews later. And those muck spawns below Halaa? Silenced, rounded up, and reduced back to the water they came from. Take that, Nagrand!

Halfway through with the Throne of Elements quests and Nesingwary's Nagrand Safari, Anselma headed over to Telaar. There, she hooked up with a minor celebrity...


Where is he famous from? Running up a little girl's cell phone bill, is where. Banned to Nagrand for his trespasses, he hands out quests and wears a color he is not quite fond of as punishment. It's ok, Jill, the robe does match your eyes.




So there you go. This is my shame, at not having posted for so long because I was wrapped around Anselma's little finger. She was my very first non Horde character, and I am remembering why I loved her before.

Because she is a cockroach. You can't kill her. Her health dips to critical levels and she bubbles. No mana? No problem. She bandages while they beat on her. Oh, pulled a few too many? No she didn't. One more joins the party? Hot sauce, this is fun! Oops, health is dropping and mana is dry....Lay on Hands! then, Seal of Wisdom and Judgement of Wisdom...back to health and mana is filling as they beat on her some more.

Alright, apologies done and a post made, I'm going back to playing with Anselma. Northrend by Monday!

Who Needs a Tank, Anyway?

My girlfriend and I were commiserating on how we can never find a tank when we want to gear up. For her, it's her main, for me it's my numerous alts. So, I've decided to tame a tank pet. I know I probably will never tank an instance with it, but perhaps it'll help tank, or run some group quests (she's a healer, so it'll be a cinch!). Carlotta would like to introduce you all to Spice.

Sorry, after all the fun of today, we didn't feel like editing out the list. Spice is the rare spawn in Silithus. I thought Grubthor was a horrible name, and since I think of the movie Dune when I see him, his name is now Spice. Tomorrow, I will be putting him out for a test run.

If any of you have any tips for tanking with a pet, please leave us a note, or drop us an email!

I Dusted Off My Tank Yesterday...

...and it was a horrible disaster! A friend needed a run through of Azjol-Nerub for his new death knight and his son's moonkin, and I was faced with the decision to either overpower the instance with heals and pug a tank, or to try and tank and pug a healer. In hindsight, the first option would have probably been best, but I decided to dust off Shawndra and put her into the fray. She was specialized well, in the protection tree as she should be, and she had all her Karazhan gear, with the new addition of some plate shoulders. Her glyphs had not been changed out for leveling, as she still had glyph of Revenge, Thunderclap, and a couple other tank specific glyphs. We grabbed my hubby's death knight to round out the party, as there were no healers available, and pugged a healer.

Right from pull one I had trouble gaining rage. I chalked it up to my not knowing how to play a warrior, having been so deeply involved with my priestess. So, I shrugged of having lost aggro to the death knights, and pulled again. My rage starvation continued. I apologized, got to the first boss, and pulled again, hitting my rage generation button and prayed as I started Thunderclapping and using my new AoE stun Shockwave to help the healer keep me up more easily, and hoping it would help to gain on aggro generation. A little better, but I had still very little control over the mobs. But I had more rage! Got to the boss, used devastate, heroic strike, shockwave/thunderclap, and sprinkled in taunts to try and keep him on me. I think I remember dying just before the boss went down. I was resurrected, and we skipped down to the next boss' lair. Pull number one? Wipe! I forgot to mention we had wiped at least once on the way to boss number one, and once pulling the mobs directly in front of same boss. 3 wipes in, our priest says, "You guys are beyond bad." and leaves group. I had disclaimed myself before the run, and apologized after he hearthed out, thanking him for sticking it out. Seems part of my rage starvation was directly the cause of having been bubbled. I didn't say anything to him about that, but started figuring out how to continue this run so my friend could get what he needed. End solution? Pull out the overpowered healer and bring in an overpowered death knight to tank. Instance completed shortly after, no more wipes.

So, where did I go wrong? My hit rating is abysmal. This could have been a problem. I have no doubt that that was a big part of it. No recent practice, and no careful study of other warrior tanking blogs. I need to know what attacks to use, in what order, in different situations. guess I'll be looking over some tanking blogs! And, I need an overpowered healer to back me up while I tank guild runs until I figure out this tanking thing again.

Will I pack Shawndra away in mothballs again? Maybe not, but she definitely isn't my top priority. If you have any suggestions, places to go, stuff to try, alluring tanking items to equip...

Please leave a comment after the article!

Dumb Warrior Learns New Trick...err...Macro.

Delgada is ready for raiding. Mostly. Tonight she hit 438 enchanting, and her tailoring is at 440ish. She is missing a few enchants (mostly because I have been using my materials to level, and not to improve her gear), and could probably upgrade some of her gems. All in all, she is ready. If she needed to heal Naxxramas, she could do it. Not alone, mind you, but she would be an asset to a raid. KNR isn't raiding, seriously, yet. I think someone posted a raid for this week. As we just lost our main tank (C, you are missed! Damn this economy for making you do this!), scheduled raids for the last 2 weeks have been cancelled due to lack of...interest? Or maybe it's because we don't have enough of the right people in the right places. Whatever, it turns out we are lacking in tanks. Delgada, it has been fun. Dust off your tank set, Shawndra.

So, I borrowed 50 gold from the guild bank to respec back to protection. All these new talents, what to pick? Sure, once leveling is over, I'll look for the perfect "cookie cutter" spec for her that will fit the guilds needs, but right now, let's play with all these new talents! I am really enjoying sword and boarding through my quests. I'm a dual wielding troll at heart. Somehow, going the sword and board route this time doesn't make me feel like I am missing out. It helps to see my shield (sporting a new titanium spike) slam for 1800-2100 when it crits. Makes me all giddy inside.

I hate having twenty different buttons for every stance that I can use. It drives me crazy! So, I had this insane idea. Let's map 2 abilities to several keys. What a concept! You know, I am not the smartest cookie sometimes, and my husband, the rogue, smiled at me, patted my head, and sent an instant message with the kind of macro I wanted, soI could copy, paste in game, and edit. For those of you who think this sounds like a good idea and may not have done this before, I will put below an example of what I did.


#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:ctrl] Cleave;Heroic Strike;

I used the "?" icon for the macro, so that it would show which attack I was using. Heroic Strike is to Cleave what Frostbolt is to Cone of Cold, sort of. Frostbolt is for one target, Cone of Cold is an area of effect cone. Heroic Strike is a single target special attack, where Cleave does about the same thing, to 2 mobs. So, if I have only one target, the button is fine, just use it. But if there is more than one mob attacking me, I'll hit the ctrl key, and now I'm hitting two mobs. I felt so clever when I was done, as I paired up hamstring with rend, devastate with victory rush, shockwave with thunder clap, shield bash with pummel...

So, I feel as if I have accomplished something huge today (yesterday...it's 1 in the morning here). I got out there, quested quite a bit, and hit 72. Replaced a ring and a ranged weapon, and didn't cry too much when that paladin killed me the tenth time. And I killed a death knight! OK, I had help. A very nice shaman from Sad Panda kept me up until she cast that infernal anti magic shield. Sent enchanting materials and raw materials for cooking to Delgada, sent leather to Maura, and sent all the leftovers to my bank character. Busy, Busy, productive day in World of Warcraft.

And the house only sort of looks messy....my day is a success! Off to bed I go. Any suggestions for a rusty tank, please leave them below!

WTT Epix for nap...

It has been a busy week in our small house. Laundry is at the half done mark as it usually is, the kitchen sink is full of dishes, the living room is strewn with toddler toys and Rock Band accessories, and I won’t even poke my head into the doorway of the kids rooms for fear of losing what little sanity I have left. I am tired! It’s been a busy week at work, too, what with special promotions and staff meetings. All I want is a nap! But, no, it’s Saturday, 4:30 server time (1:30 my time), and we’re going to go kill a king's court of tall fat men, then attempt to do damage to a large drooling one eyed loin cloth wearing ….ogre? I log out of my bank toon/twink (who was happily looking at the shiny things for sale and snapping up bargains), and log in my shadow priestess. She buys herself a few unstable elixirs and some mana potions, then takes some enhancing food out of her bank (how fish stays fresh in a bank vault boggles the mind, but it hasn’t killed her yet. Maybe because she is undead?). Someone sends out a summons and whisks her to the Blades Edge Mountains, and Gruul's Lair. Five minutes later, someone whispers in her ear. ”You know, we could really use Shawndra instead. Would you mind?” Of course she minds, but when you can’t find a tank, and you’re an officer, it doesn’t make much difference. I reluctantly sit her outside the instance and log her out. Shawndra logs in, scrounges for food and money to buy a couple of unstable flasks and health potions and accepts a summons to the Lair.

King Maulgar and his court are fractious today, and they are not put in their place until the 3rd try. By this time I am tired of people trying to tell me how to tank a mob that won’t let Shawndra stand still long enough to cast more than a taunting yowl in his general direction. I am cranky,and the next person with "helpful" advice gets critically hit with a wall of text gibberish. With Delgada, if I nod for a second in between mind flay and mind blast, it makes no large difference. It might even help, as she seems to be climbing quickly up the aggro charts these days. But having to pay attention for the whole fight….. I yawn as I hit the taunt button again, attempt to throw out a devastating armor sundering blow with her sword, only to find Shawndra running away in fear, right into Krosh Firebrand’s blast wave. She comes back to her senses, intervenes to take a blow from the warlock, and taunts him again before he casts death coil on her, sending her off again to the other side of the room in fear. I take a swig of my diet soda (caffeinated, to keep me from napping), recover, and hit the intervene button again.

King Maulgar and his court, having been soundly spanked by our raid group, give up one measly epic pair of hunter shoulders. I keep hoping for tanking shoulders, as it is the only non-epic piece of tanking gear Shawndra still uses, but at least this time she didn’t lose a roll to a tree. We move on, kill a few of Gruul’s minions, and sit down to refresh our flagging energies (and to allow our puppeteers to make use of the facilities and get refills on their snacks). Our fearless leader (well, maybe not completely fearless, he is in stealth) checks to see that we are ready, and sends the tanks in. Shawndra is not main tank, thankfully, even though I dare say she could have managed the fight nicely. She’s off tanking, trying to be second on the aggro table. This is very hard when Gruul is not hitting her and making her angry. Rage is in short supply. She yells an encouraging and health enhancing yell, and stands under the cave in. That should make her good and mad! She pops a nightmare seed, and hacks at Gruul’s ankle.

Well, Gruul mashed us soundly into the ground the first time. The second time, I was determined it would be the last. It wasn’t. I found myself running back again, looking at Shawndra’s dangerously low armor rating. One more was all she had left in her. I imagine her armor would have been severely dented, blood spattered, the ornamentation broken off, jagged cuts in spots like those a cheap can opener makes. By this time, my yawning was causing my eyes to water. She sat down in the doorway, ate a bit of crawfish, drank a kool-aid colored flask, and danced as she waited for the priests and paladins to bless her with their enhancing spells. “Everyone ready? Good. Tanks, go.” Shawndra walked out to the center, slammed her shield into Gruul’s kneecap, and started hacking at his ankle again. She switched ankles, slammed her shield into his other knee, yelled out how ugly and weak he was, and continued hacking at his ankle. She then went berserk, hacking more quickly at his calf, yelling encouragement to her teammates. The fight was almost over. The main tank went down, and Shawndra slammed her shield into his knee again, challenging him to put her down. The roof started caving in again, and Shawndra moved out of it, now fully angered and needing every bit of health she had left in her. She blocked, she parried, she yelled, she sundered, she struck at him fiercely. Then, a silly mage zapped him with an ice bolt, and the fight was over. Gruul was dead, and the raid rejoiced. He had been holding onto two pairs of pants and a headpiece. Shawndra somehow won the roll on the pants, only to find herself sitting in front of the equipment vendor later, feeling guilty. Her tanking pants were better than the tier 4 she was looking at, and her fury pants, well, she didn’t like losing all that hit rating. So I logged her out there to think about it.

I turned in my chair, and beheld my little house, overflowing with children. During the raid my niece had arrived, and my kids were having a jam session in the living room. The toddler was in bed “napping”. My husband had grabbed his latest magazine and locked himself in the bathroom. Through the screen door I saw a couple of kids running around the front yard. The hallway was clean, the kitchen had been tidied, and I could hear a load of laundry rinsing while the dryer tumbled. All seemed well with the world, so I got up, aimed for my chair, and looked at the clock. It was 4:30. I sighed, stifled another yawn, and went into the kitchen to whip up dinner instead.

Poor Delgada, I left her sitting in front of Gruul’s lair, under the hostile glare of very large and powerful ogres. Oh well, she will have to fend for herself. I NEED A NAP!