Tank like a girl

After that somewhat disheartening AQ40 visit, I had a much more successful Sunday, when we blazed through ZA in record-time, scoring all chests for a change. The third chest got us one of the strangest rings I ever expected to see in a raid, Signet of Eternal Life. Lots of stamina, but resilience? Our paladin took it for arena, but still, buh?

I actually did not tank this time, as I was still sick and felt like facerolling again. Besides, I wanted to see how well my moonkin does now. In a fit of sickness, I actually didn’t wear any hit gear, or I would have done better, but I broke 1k DPS on Nalorakk, which is very nice.

That was the first guild raid where I wasn’t main-tanking. I feel like I am maybe hogging the spotlight too much. The tanks did just fine without me. The only real difference that I saw was the other warrior not being anywhere near my damage output. She was at the bottom of the charts, where I usually end up being 3rd in ZA. This inspired me to another post about prot warrior DPS, sometime later this week.

Loot-wise everyone but the druid tank scored something. The warrior tank got Ancient Aqir Artifact, which is pretty neat but not high on my priority list. The only thing I really still want from there is the shield off Dragonhawk. Which he’s never dropped for us. We got Arrow-fail Chestguard for the third ID in a row. One more chance for me to get the shield, then I think we’re done with TBC raiding.

After Zul’Aman, I had the tank itch that DPSing can never fulfil, and as H OHB was the daily, I grabbed a guild group and off we went. Besides, I needed to give my new Executioner enchant a spin. Zomg, it’s so bright, it burns! Looks very cool though. Only two of us had ever been to H OHB, the pockethealer and I, and I never managed to complete it. It went very well, though we had one wipe. The last wave of dragonkin hit me with 2 mortal strikes for 4k each, and then I was done with fairly quickly. The second time I used Intimidating Shout and all was well. Best part about the heroic? I was number one DPS and did 31% of the damage, haha. Glyph of Revenge, how I love thee.

I need to mention that at the beginning we killed Don Carlos, and I won Don Carlos’ Famous Hat. So fashionable that I need to add a screenshot. Oh Model Viewer, why dost thou forsake me still!

Two heroics left to go that I have never done, Crypts and Mana-Tombs. Shouldn’t be any problem whatsoever. I will definitely get my heroic dungeon achievement done before the expansion. I know that a lot of you are raid tanks by passion and do little else, but for me, the heart of the game is 5-mans still. Everything I know about tanking and pulling and responding when the going gets tough I have learned from 5-mans.

My very casual guild has a very light raid schedule, Saturday/Sunday on alternating weekends. Based on this schedule, it was our last ‘official’ raid weekend before WotLK hits the shelves. I wanted to do something special for this last weekend, but it didn’t quite turn out as expected. Due to lack of numbers doing T5 or even T6 content for shit and giggles was out of the question. Let me tell you, I sing the praises of 10-man progression, bring it on.

Then old-world raids came up as alternative. Everyone loves to complete achievements for old world stuff. My guild recently co-hosted a Molten Core adventure, so I had my eyes on bigger goals. AQ40! Bug mounts for everyone, and seeing C’thun, that was my goal. Now, I have been sick with bronchitis for over a week, and on Saturday I just didn’t feel like leading a raid and tanking. Never mind that we had only 19 people signed up, not all of them 70. It just seemed a recipe for disaster. A friend and raid leader from our allied guild took over and I brought my boomkin for facerolling DPS.

Very few people in the raid had ever been to AQ40, so it was mostly a brute force approach, subsequent wipe, visit to Wowwiki and then a second try getting the boss down. I think the only boss we one-shot was Prophet Skeram. We wiped once on all other bosses. The bug trio was a bit chaotic, so was Battleguard Sartura. I have no words to describe the bug tunnel and wish I had taken a screenshot. If you can’t stand bugs, do not go there. Ever. Grossest gauntlet ever. We weren’t done with the gauntlet yet when someone already pulled Fankriss, but we got him down. I am not surprised that people went nuts with nature resistance for Princess Huhuran, she was pretty nasty, and like all princesses in the game, pretty ugly.

And then came the Twin Emperors. Oh. My. God.

Here’s where things went down the toilet pretty fast. After the first couple wipes, one of the physical tanks had to leave and so I brought in Kadomi after all to pick up Vekni’lash after the teleport. On the first try with me in I promptly messed that up. On all other tries from there on I picked up fine, though it sucked when the teleport timer was a little bit off and I moved in too early, hit with an Arcane Barrage. Still, Warbringer really helps here, a lot. The damage you take there as tank is a joke, every trash mob in a heroic hits harder.

And yet we wiped continuously. We just didn’t have the numbers, especially when it came to healers. The warlock tanks just weren’t kept up and as soon as one of them went down, shit happened. Eventually we called it. Hats off to those of my readers who actually did this content at level 60. I have no idea how you did it, because it sure made places like ZA and Karazhan look like a joke.