Tank like a girl

The idea of a WoW blog originally sprang from me spamming my personal blog every Monday with tales of my weekends in WoW. As a German player on American servers that’s when I have it going on, with instances, etc. Everyone who comes here should get used to me rambling on Mondays.

This last Saturday, I led another Gruul and Magtheridon raid, with girls from my guild, plus friends from our guild alliance. I wasn’t anywhere as nervous as I was the first time round, but I can safely say I prefer the ease of 10-man raids. For 25-man raids, there are obstacles to smooth experiences. People not showing up. People spamming you with whispers for invites. Assigning everyone into the groups they want to be in for best buffage. I made the mistake of inviting early and then someone I had counted on and who needed Mags for the Champion title suddenly not filling in, and the person I had squeezed in refusing to leave, because of wanting a specific piece of loot. My blood pressure is rising just reading it again, aargh. So, hats off to those of you who regularly lead 25-man raids, you are stronger people than me.

We had 16 people from my guild, 9 from the guild alliance, and we started about 15 minutes after official raid start time, which I guess is alright for big raid leader noob that I am. It helped that everyone was reaaaally on time and well prepared.

As for the raid, it went smooth, baby, smooth. I don’t know, I was a bit alarmed, because I had heard that our allied guild had tried Magtheridon twice recently and always had to call it because people just weren’t focused enough. In we went to HKM, where we promptly wiped, because Krosh ran over to where I wanted to pick up Maulgar, and I promptly died after a blast wave and two hits by Maulgar himself. We wiped it, went in again, I nudged hunters to put Misdirect on during the countdown, not afterwards (duh!) and we killed Maulgar and his chumps. Now let me introduce you to someone special in my life: Skirting. She’s that handsome druid over there, and she’s played by my partner. See the sparkly shoulders she’s sporting? /facepalm

It had been my goal to get the T4 shoulders. I won them last time fair and square but gave the token to my crappily-geared off-tank. This time Skirting was the off-tank, only one Defender token dropped, and I lost the roll. There’s nothing more bitter than losing the roll on something you covet so much to a person you love, heh! She hearthed to Shattrath, grabbed new shoulders, enchant and gems, and then we went in and one-shot Gruul. It was a really flawless kill, we only had one death in the raid, and that was at about 5% on him. I think druids do have an easier time as off-tank on Gruul. She took all Hurtful Strikes but two, for considerably less damage than our warrior tank last time. Of course we also killed him faster, in 11 growths. No ground-breaking record, but not bad at all.

We moved on to Magtheridon, swapping two hunters for a rogue and a moonkin, and went on to one-shot him as well. I have no idea what was different from our allied guild’s raids, but the channelers went down nice and easy, the infernals were mostly under control, and despite later seeing that I took some heavy hits (worst for 10k), my health never seemed to be down much. I had the help of an experienced guy from the other guild to call out cube clicking, because while tanking Mags I have this tunnel view of him and my action bar. I ended up rage-starved quite a lot which was annoying, but other than that, Magtheridon is as tank and spank as it gets, to the point of boring.

Two hour raid, two 25-man raid bosses down, and feeling like an accomplished raid leader, that was my weekend. Now I am trying to figure out if it’s worth running Gruul one more time, for the blasted shoulders, or to pray for the shoulders from the first chest in Zul’Aman. We’ll see if I can lay my greedy hands on them this coming ZA.