Tank like a girl

Lately, I haven’t done much raiding on Kadomi. I got my Naxxramas achievement and then spent lots of time futzing around with Argent Tournament. Which I am officially bored of now. Even IoQD was entertaining beyond that. The Tournament got old very quickly. It got me Exalted with Darkspear Trolls, so now I have me some raptors in my stable of mounts. One faction to go til Ambassador, but I am in no hurry to suck up to fancy blood elves.

I usually do my Sholazar dailies, the fishing daily, the cooking daily. Dutifully picked up my Oracles egg. But no more because I got my lucky break.

Isn’t she a beauty? I really love flying around on her, and /mountspecial is pretty fun too. I from that point on dutifully finished my Oracles rep til I got the achievement, and unceremoniously dumped them to become a fan of the crazy Frenzyheart. A mercenary is me!

My dear friend and fellow officer Cariad is heading out to the Arctic for research, like every summer, and it was her wish that our guild should attempt to at least down Flame Leviathan in Ulduar before she leaves for a couple months. I was a bit doubtful how we’d fare, but we have a very solid bunch of players, and our raid group was pretty much almost all of the best people we have. And I got scheduled as tank, which made me happy. After a late start, and a very chaotic beginning, we set off in our vehicles to try the first boss.

I really thought a vehicle fight would be extremely sucky, but I had fun. I was in a siege engine with my partner, and just like in RL, she accused me of being a terrible driver. I think this fight was never in danger of not being a one-shot, it was that easy. Loot pinata, woo!

We moved on to Razorscale next. The first try was pretty terrible, with adds all over the place. The second try we got her to the ground, but it was still kinda messy. The third try had one casualty, me, who ate 42k damage in 2 seconds. Is that normal? Because that was pretty brutal. Also brutal was what the rest of the raid did to her and she ate dust. How awesome is that?

I have to admit to a fatal tank mistake that I did not understand the Fuse Armor mechanics. I actually thought it was Flame Buffet that wears off and we did not properly taunt off each other. I only had 1 stack of Fuse Armor though, and my partner, as bear, lived through six stacks of it. All in all, I felt that a feral druid tank is really a lot more survivable in there. I bit it on the trash before Ignis, e.g., she didn’t. Food for thought.

We did XT-002 Deconstructor next. The first try we had some problems with healing through Lightbombs. The second try…well, a screenshot says more than words:

For a group that only went in to test the waters, we did pretty fabulously, I dare say! No tanking loot at all though, mumble. Ah, but my time will come. On XT-002, I tanked Pummelers. Which was okay. I was disappointed to find out that you cannot taunt them at range, which is just me being spoiled by just about anything being tauntable these days. I was very pleased that I can actually take out a pair of Pummelers without any help, from heart-phase to heart-phase. Maybe that was just lucky. My one frustrating moment was when I was slow to spot a Pummeler. The bear picked it up with Swipe, and no matter what I tried, I could not get it off her. So I eventually gave up, took my lone Pummeler off sulking, and that was that.

We tried Ignis a couple of times, not getting very far with him. However, it gave us a good idea of the encounter, and I am sure next time we’ll get him. I was MTing Ignis, but I think next time I’ll be on adds. Using Concussion Blow on a Construct while in the Scorch will be super-helpful. Veneretio was right, we are very mobile adds-tanks, and I enjoy it as much as handling big bosses.

Next weekend, we’ll try the grand finale of T7 content, Malygos. If we can handle three bosses in Ulduar, Malygos should work. I will likely heal, as this is a one-tank encounter for all that I know, but we’ll see. Getting out of Naxxramas was fabulous, and I can’t wait to see more exciting, new encounters.