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!

Unicorns

Stoppable Force posted today about the unicorns he is chasing in game, and asked us to respond with ours. I have different unicorns on different characters, but I'll try to lump them all into a single list.

• Pets. Delgada, Shawndra, and Halinka are pet collectors. Delgada has her Hyacinth Macaw, Shawndra has her Captured Firefly, and Halinka has, well, a lot of pets. I would like, on any of those three, to get the Disgusting Oozeling or a whelp that wasn't a Special Edition pet.
• Dresses. To a certain point, all my characters have a dress collection. I would love to have a way to pack them all in a vacuum sealed bag and store them in one slot of my bank. That way, I could get more dresses!
• Knick Knacks. I love those grey items that fall off just one mob, or that drop rarely. Needle and Thread, the Romance Novels, Salt Licks... They're great. I rolled a rogue just so I could pick pocket some of these items. I want a shelf to store all my silly knick knacks, taking up that one bank slot, so I can collect more, and more! I hate that some of these neat things never make it through my bank cleaning days...
• Pet Rock (or Happy Fun Rock, or both!). It's a silly thing I could probably have if I spent a few hours in a rock elemental area. I know this. I don't want to pay for one, I just want one to drop into my bags. Or two. I love throwing those things to friends!
• Mounts. Halinka collects those. Sadly, she has not been getting the attention she deserves since having parked her in the Argent Tournament Grounds. She hates that place. I really need to reset her hearthstone for Dalaran. She would really love a hard to get mount. Sadly, she has lost the will to farm, so buying one is out of the question. Maybe we should set her stone for Lights Hope, and farm Argent Dawn reputation and the Baron's mount. Race you for it, Stop!

My ultimate unicorn is always of the moment, though. Shawndra is on the edge of 80, and the unicorn that is gearing and defense cap and all those fun things is hanging out, munching tufts of tender grass waiting for the ding. After that, with a geared tank, healer, and a semi geared dps, the unicorn might change to that of gearing the hunter, or even of raising my rogue.

Got a lot of work ahead of me, and it is time to run out the door to the real world. Thanks for the inspiration, Stop!

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.

You're Doing It.

The game does not matter. So long as you play any game that is part of the massively multi-player online role play genre, you're doing it. Sure, you can make your characters on a Player versus Player server, or even a Player versus Environment server, and think that you are not doing it. But you are. You are role playing. You don't have to make your characters on a server that is designated for role play. You don't have to have an elaborate back story, or even an idea of a back story. Your character's name doesn't even have to be a real name (yes, lolbbqurmom, I'm talking to you). Just the fact that you twiddled with what class to play, what race it would be, what color hair it had, and how many piercings it had made you a role player. Yeah, and you guys out there, playing bouncy little female toons because you'd rather watch a girl's rear while you quest, give me a break. The minute you pretend to be a real girl to gain an advantage in loot drops, or any other matter, you role played.

That was just the beginning for you. Character creation can seem harmless enough, but you had to go out and interact with the non player characters with your new avatar. Now, everything that avatar does is related to it, good or bad, right or wrong, purple or green. You have begun to build a history for it. Did you know that once you got tired of killing boars, so did your avatar? That quest reward that you never got rid of because it matched your avatars eyes? That is history sitting in your bank, or you can call it what it is, role play gear. Did you sit your avatar down in an inn while you went away from your keyboard for a nature call? Your character enjoyed a nice frosty brew while you were gone, and flirted with a barmaid. Or how about all those quests you did to gain favorable reputation with the Skyguard? Your character could be called a flyboy, or a genocidal maniac only interested in wiping arrakoa from the face of Azeroth.

Did you know that denying group invitations pegged your character as a loner? Those snide comments you put up in general chat while you were dutifully having your character pick up quest items made your character add to it's personality, making it a sarcastic, handle with care kind of being. That nasty chat session you had when you got home from school, in trade chat for every bank alt and poor unsuspecting player to see pegged your character as cool in the eyes of every other foul mouthed yutz, and added your character to the ignore lists of more mature players. No player associates these things to you, the person sitting behind the screen, unless they know you in the real world. These things are attributed to a name in the chat channel, a bunch of pixels you threw together, thinking it was just a video game. Boy, were you wrong. You bought a part in the play called World of Warcraft, on the server you made the character on, and now you are stuck with it.

Of course, you could delete your character if, for some reason, it has given you a bad reputation. You could server transfer, or even faction transfer. Name, sex and faction changes leave that character on ignore lists, so if you were looking to wipe the slate clean, it just rearranges things a bit. Whatever you choose, you have learned one valuable lesson. Role play is a very basic part of this game, and you're doing it. Keep your nose clean, and your chat, and for goodness sake, have some fun with it!

Riverside/San Bernardino Meet Up?

I hear they have this great meet up for the Los Angeles area World of Warcraft players, and I thought, gee, that isn't so far away. Then I looked a my husband, opened my mouth to say something about it, and promptly shut it. It really is far away. I live on the edge of a bit of desert that separates a historic stagecoach stop from Palm Springs. My closest famous neighbor is a dinosaur best remembered from a Pee Wee Herman movie. I guess what I am trying to say is, I feel like I live in the back of beyond. So, I need something closer than Los Angeles.

I know there are people in this area that enjoy World of Warcraft as much as I do. I know there are even some on the Smolderthorn server, even though it is an eastern time zone server. I know there is at least one commenter that isn't too far away too consider a Riverside area meet up a stretch, once in a while.

So, comment away. Is there a group already going? Do we desperately need to make one? I sure would love to gather with people who enjoy the same stuff as I do in real life instead of always behind this keyboard. I know you do, too. That's right, I am pointing right at you. Go on and start a discussion below.