Tank like a girl

This Saturday, my guild DotH had its first raid of WotLK scheduled, a momentous event if you’re a casual raider. The plan was to do Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon if horde had Wintergrasp. But of course horde did not have Wintergrasp, so that plan fell through.

We had a bit of a rough start as we somehow managed to get a four dragonkin pack as adds on the first pull and thus wiped. Pulled a bit more carefully after running back, and from there on proceeded to one-shot everything. I was probably the crankiest I have ever been as raid leader, but seeing people stand in void zones and just continue what they’re doing makes for cranky Kadomi, rar.

I really expected one wipe on Sartharion while we learned how to position him and where the safe spots for the Lava Walls were, but no, first try, dragon down. People were generally good about running when they were supposed to run, and as healer I was pretty much bored the whole fight. I try to have as little overhealing as possible, which meant I just didn’t heal that much. At least it didn’t feel like I did.

In any case, it was a very promising start to WotLK raiding. We might be casual, but we’ve always played well, and that made me pretty happy. 32 minutes after our first raid started, it was over already. I didn’t do any prep work or I would have considered starting Naxx a bit early, but instead we just dispersed and broke into several groups running heroics. The heroics we ran felt a lot more challenging than Obsidian Sanctum, I will say. We got Xevozz and Zuramat in Violet Hold, what a fun combo. :O

On Sunday, I finally got a weapon upgrade, as Infantry Assault Blade dropped in H UK. I am still not quite happy, because it’s a slow weapon, and I am trying to get away from slow weapons. It was enough to get me to 540 defense again, as I lost a lot of defense when I bought my Heroes’ Dreadnaught Breastplate for badges. That was yay. Not so yay are my daily Utgarde Pinnacle runs. Yesterday was run number 9 or 10, I have lost count. King Ymiron keeps dropping belts and gloves and sometimes a ring, but never a sword. Never. And still, I will continue running it every day, until I get my sword.

Inbetween running UK and UP, I noticed that Wintergrasp was up, and that we had a bunch of people on. I did some quick drumming up of people via gchat, dothfriends channel and AIM and seven members of DotH and 3 friends raced to Wintergrasp, with 28 minutes left on the timer. I worried it might not be enough time, but then I’d never been there. 10 minutes total work tops, for two emblems and two PvP items that were of no use to anyone in the raid. Still, fun little encounter that I would consider even easier than say Murmur in Shadow Labs or Attumen in Karazhan, and certainly something that we’ll try to do every week now, if it’s available.

Naxx start is on Feb 21, most likely, as I’ll be really busy the next few weekends. Hope it goes just as well, but I also hope it will be quite a bit more challenging than the single boss encounters so far.