New raiding adventures
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.
/pets
I remember my pet tanks runs for the Red Sword of Courage…
…I was there for every single one! Damned thing does NOT want to drop.
Here’s to hoping the bastard coughs it up soon. Skadi can at least drop a drake for you for all the times you see him, eh…
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I got myself an Infantry Assault Blade as well before upgrading to the Slayer of the Lifeless. It’s a slight downgrade from the Red Sword of Courage, but I no longer feel the need to farm Pinnacle to the end of time.
I’d trade it all for the Last Laugh though. There’s something more “Horde-esque” about tanking with an axe if you ask me.
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admin Reply:
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
That’d be my dream weapon, Last Laugh. Disappointing it only drops on heroic. Swords are for sissy humans!
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Tarsus Reply:
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Agreed. Though the over-preference of the itemization team for swords as the epic tanking weapon of choice has been commented on since Vanilla WoW. I’ll also second your motion for something a little bit more accessible. Like, I don’t know, a tanking weapon you can buy for Emblems of Heroism?
I remember when Spineshatter (a mace! shocking!) was considered something of a bone tossed towards Horde tanks. How the tables have turned!
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Cariad Reply:
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Last Laugh also has the advantage of having the coolest name for a weapon EVAR.
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That King hasnt dropped it for me either. And what drives me nuts is everyone’s clever ideas on the gauntlet…gee just let me tank and spank not pull and run out grabbing spears!!
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The good news is that Infantry Assault Blade is good enough for any content in the game right now. Well, I haven’t done 25 man Malygos yet, but I’ve done everything else but that with the sword including all of Naxx on both 10 man and 25 man. With a good ability rotation and healthy amounts of expertise and hit you won’t have any threat issues.
The bad news, for me at least, is that danged sword in Pinnacle just doesn’t exist. I’ve been running Pinnacle every day and the sword never drops. Yesterday I ran it with this mage who swore it dropped every time he ran it and he bet me 20 gold it wold drop. So at least I got 20 gold out of that run, lol.
The only tanking weapon I’ve seen drop better than the Infantry Asault Blade was the Last Laugh and I lost out on raid points to another tank in ou guild
. We should drop KT again tonight and I’m highest on points so maybe it will drop again. (crosses fingers)
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Tarsus Reply:
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I can safely supplement your supposition: Malygos 25 is tank-able with the Infantry Assault Blade. Just be ready to taunt in case any of your Death Knights mess up and Death Grip the dragon instead of the spark.
I guess if your DPS grossly out-gears you this might be an issue, but I didn’t have any problems with threat for the fight.
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Tankette Reply:
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
I finally got the Red Sword last night. About freeking time.
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Congratulations!
Also, running Naxx 25 to get Last Laugh to drop is more frustrating than trying to get the red sword. Just thought you should know
I feel so sad, Every time I run around Orgrimmar it looks like every other tank has it except me.
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Its ok to get cranky on dps standing in void zones, some will never learn. My guild have taken OS25 with 2 drakes and my dpsers are still standing in the circles if no one scream at them on vent :s
Grats on your first raid and good luck in UP, I used that one untill I got Last Laugh =)
Naxx is like anny heroic don’t expect to mutch, challenge awaits in Ulduar!
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good luck on the sword, it’ll drop eventually (i just got mine last week, after trying for 4~5 weeks)
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I won’t rant about heroics or raids being too easy because at this point everyone has his opinion about this topic and lets just leave it at that.
But still I’m a little bit disappointed about how fast you can gear up. My warrior is an alt. He’s 80 for less than a month. He’s a jewelcrafter. When I hit 80 I got myself the blacksmithing blue items and 2 epic crafted items and I took every nice tanking quest reward up to this point.
The first heroics are hard, but with some CC you’ll get through it and you’ll very soon be able to just charge in, TC and cleave and reduce incoming damage with shockwave, concussion blow, shieldbash etc. And I’m no excellent tank at all and I still won’t go into HoL or HoS with a PuG.
If you do heroics regularly you’ll be up to 2T7 pretty fast which is very different from the feeling of BC where I tried to farm the blue dungeon sets.
I did nearly all heroics with pugs and two 10 man nax pugs which both ended at sapphiron. So it wasn’t the fact that I’m in a raiding guild that helped me gear up my warrior. I’m all positive for making raiding easier and especially gearing up for raids but on the other side I kinda miss the rep grind that took a little bit longer and the gap between heroic items and raiding items. I kinda liked grinding for the Earthwarden for my druid, and it felt much more epic than grinding to exalted now. And I’m a little bit sad as to how few items in Nax10 are still an upgrade for me.
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GL on the sword, I ran it 2 times to see it drop and have it ninja’d from me, once by a guildie, the other time by a recruit (stupid loot whore pally and rogue)
Keep running it, you will get it eventually.
And about how short the raids are, my guild clears all of 10 man OS/VOA and then 25 man OS/VOA.
Its silly about how much you get done in some of these raids.
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Took me over 20 times for the Red Sword, and I would have ran it 20 more. The model is something amazing to look at. The stats are a decent upgrade to the H UK one, if for the 1.6 speed alone. I’m glad you got yours, Tankette!
And, now that you have it, I hope it feels worthwhile to have done all of those runs!
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As you may recall from my posts in January, I have been worried about my performance in heroics. I utterly failed to tank Ingvar the Plunderer in reg UK at 72, and I couldn’t get past Commander Stoutbeard in heroic Nexus the first two times I tried it. Since then I’ve managed to complete Nexus, UK, Gun’Drak, and Drak’Tharon Keep at heroic level — all with multiple wipes per run. I even had a disastrous attempt to do a quick re-spec to DPS to get a look at 25 man Obsidian Sanctum… and managed to do *less* DPS than if I had just stayed in my prot spec.
All that was just redeemed by an AWESOME run of 10 man Vault of Archavon. Thanks to awesome heals and high quality DPS I finally felt in control as a main tank. More than that, it was exhilarating! Thanks to your “easy Heroics gear” guide (thank you oh, so much for that!) I was incredibly effective. Yes, I was below all the 6 DPS in the party, but I was just *1 DPS* below the lowest (1142 DPS vs 1143, and I may have been able to make that if I weren’t for being tossed into the air all the time). For the entire run, I managed to Heroic Strike more often than not (white swings were in seventh place at 6.2% of damage, behind Shockwave at 6.5% and Deep Wounds at 7%). My favorite part was blocking for 1600 and critical blocking for 3200 when Sheild Block was up and the Glyph of Blocking proced. It’s possible that the top DPSer was holding back a tad to avoid pulling aggro, but we still had no problem beating the enrage timer.
Thank you for your gear lists. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Most of all thank you for your encouragement. I’m sure there are lots more wipes in my future, and I need to learn to use my cooldowns *before* it is too late (two wipes in Heroic DTK today were due to trying to save them for just a bit longer), but a run like today’s Vault every now and then will keep me in the game, standing in front, and taking the hits so others can pour damage into the mobs.
P.S. would you recommend picking up Chained Military Gorget with my first 25 emblems, or holding out for Waistguard of Living Iron? I don’t have any of the alternatives you’ve listed in your second gear list, and unless I get very lucky, I probably won’t get any of them until I get the 5 more emblems I need for the necklace.
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Bulliwyf Reply:
February 9th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Kind of depends on your level of gear. When I was going through the early gear stages, I had a t4 tanking neck and a t6 waist. With a belt buckle, I was able to make the t6 last a few runs before getting a better drop from a heroic.
The neck was replaced before the waist because of how much of an upgrade it was.
If its an even upgrade, go for the waist, it will take longer to get, but make the 25 badges for the neck much faster because its not as much.
Hope that makes sense.
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admin Reply:
February 9th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Your comment is so heartwarming and totally makes my day.
You are absolutely right, you need the perfect group setup to feel awesome. If everything clicks, if your DPS is great, if the healer is on top of things, then tanking is all about feeling awesome and in control. I still have runs where low DPS drags me down and things just fall apart, so remember the good DPS and group with them again.
I went with Vene’s badge gear list and bought the necklace as first piece, then went for the T7 chest. The belt is only number four on my list. There’s a fantastic trash belt from DTK, there’s a belt off Skadi, and necklaces seem to be harder to get. In the end, it all depends on what you’re currently wearing in each slot, to make that decision.
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Suvaro Reply:
February 10th, 2009 at 1:02 am
I definitely know that I was with a great group. I was most impressed with the heals (anyone on Tanaris, group with Plexi whenever you can!). I will do what I can to be with these guys again.
As for my gear… it is *defnitely* “intro level” stuff. Mostly stuff I’ve crafted myself and items from quests. Looking over your second gear list again, I think I’ll be crafting the Titansteel boots for the stamina, and I’ll use my badges to pick up the necklace first. I need the upgrade in order to survive heroic level content to get even more gear!
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