Tank like a girl

How can someone have amazing luck and then lack it at the same time? Witness my past couple days!

First off, I need to mention the moment that made my week. I got a message from Vene to check out a link to a new warrior blog that I have started reading. I am terribly flattered, flustered and happy about the reaction. I get so much positive feedback from y’all, via comments and mails, and reading that blog post, icing on the cake. I am really happy people enjoy my blog so much.

I usually don’t get excited about in-game festivals anymore. I have participated in all events but when you’ve played four years now, and have done them multiple times, they’re not so important anymore. The Lunar Festival is different however! Every Coin of Ancestry is 75 rep with all cities of your faction. As I rolled Kadomi in vanilla WoW, she’s not even Exalted with Orgrimmar, and I have long wanted to get a kodo. Pre-WotLK I did catch-up with Thunder Bluff quests, but never got closer than 7k/21k through Revered.

Saturday morning I started doing Elder runs. Elders of Northrend was completed quickly, but as we didn’t hold Wintergrasp for most of the weekend, I had to finish it late. While doing Elders of Kalimdor I also grabbed the ones in Maraudon and Zul’Farrak, reminding me that I could finish Classic Dungeonmaster. I even got Big Bad Pauldrons, I love those shoulders. Once Kalimdor was done, I ran a couple of heroics, then started working on Elders of the Eastern Kingdoms.

Now, I should mention that I did very little classic level 60 dungeon content because she wasn’t my main at the time and TBC was just around the corner then. I had never run Scholomance nor Stratholme with her, though I have extensive knowledge and memories of many wipes and four hour runs of those places. Originally I only wanted to grab the Elder in Stratholme, but then I decided to wander over to find Hearthsinger and get a shot at the piccolo. It didn’t drop, so I decided to kill the Magistrate for my key. Once I had the key I just thought ‘what the hell’ and toodled over towards deadside to visit Baron Rivendare, who magically can be in Stratholme and Naxxramas at the same time. What happened then, my screenshots can describe best.

 

Reactions in guild chat were a mixed bag, lots of congratulations but also screams of outrage that I got it on my first Baron run ever. What can I say? It’s a lot less spectacular to have when you’re horde, but it’s still pretty nifty.

After Stratholme I went to Moonglade to spend coins, and an Omen raid was forming at the time. Holy crap, what a zergfest. As you get quest completion no matter who kills Omen, Alliance and Horde teamed up to take him down, but it was extremely chaotic, with little to no heals, and his Starfall AoE made just about everyone die at least 5 times before he was down. It fills me with horror to think what would happen if only one faction would get credit for killing him.

Yesterday I finished up Elders of the Eastern Kingdom, but I started the day with a Scholomance run. Hello, Dark Shades, I hate you. If you ever want to run Scholomance as prot warrior, the only method that worked for me to kill the Dark Shades (immune to physical damage) was to get the occultists to 45% health with auto-attack and then pray for a huge Shield Slam. If that failed I had to reset the mob by jumping into the water in the room right underneath. That certainly took a while. I got phat lootz for my efforts, a Helm of Valor.

Thanks to changes in the mechanics I was finally able to finish up Uldaman, and got to compare the Titan lore from then with the continued stuff from Halls of Stone. Interesting. I then only needed to complete Deadmines and Stockades and got my Classic Dungeonmaster achievement.

Now, I am saying ‘only’ Stockades, but that part sucked. Of the Elders in the Alliance cities, Darnassus was extremely easy, Ironforge was okay but Stormwind really sucks. The Elder is deep inside Stormwind in the Park, there is no way to avoid the heavily populated Trade District, and the jerks-ratio seems to be higher in SW. I had several alliance chase me from the Trade District, so I made the mistake and ran for the safety of the Stockades. That achievement was done in under 5 minutes (what a stupid instance this is) and then I faced the dilemma of how to get to the Park now. I killed all guards outside of the instance, but the people who had chased me to the Stockades were all waiting right outside. Thankfully, none of them were there when I made it back to my corpse. Of course not, because where were all those happy PvPers? Camping the Elder in the Park. Why chase horde around and not just let them come to you? I have to say thanks to the Death Knights, they gripped me right to the Elder when I arrived in the park, so it was just a quick click, and I had my coin and the achievement.

I am now 15k/21k through Revered with Thunder Bluff, which seems a lot more manageable. I believe I will be doing either Scholo or Strat runs for Runecloth and AD rep in the near future. It was really fun to revisit all the old content that I have done so extensively in the past. Blackrock Depths took the longest, but it sure was fun, and as prot warrior it feels like you’re built to go non-stop. Once I get all the Elders in the Northrend instances, I shall be Elder Kadomi, I dig that.

In a separate post I will have to share my sob-story of how I will likely tank raid content wielding my Crescent Axe of Brooding Fury, because everything else refuses to drop for me, and how we’re doing our first 10-man this coming weekend. I will be healing, however, most likely, but still, exciting!