Kurn's Q&A #12

I really relish my Tuesdays off. I get to watch Lost and the newly-returned V and get to do WoW stuff that *I* want to do. Which includes writing on the ol’ blog. :)

1) best way to heal heroic falric with a shammy

Well, I don’t know if it’s the best way, but this is how I do it.

The real problem with Falric is the Defiling Horror for two reasons. The first is because it’s a horror effect, so Tremor Totem does nothing. The second is because everyone takes 16k damage. So what I do is endeavour to keep everyone topped up as close to max as possible before he casts the horror.

To recover from it, I cast Riptide on the tank and, using my hasted Healing Waves from Tidal Waves, I heal myself and a caster. Then I’ll Chain Heal off the Riptided tank, which will hopefully hit the tank and 2 melee. Then I’ll RT/HW anyone else who still needs health. Total time, with my crappy haste (400 haste + Wrath of Air) is about 8-9 seconds. I usually have enough time to get everyone to full, or close to it.

Apart from that, try to stay close together and bunched up for Chain Heal to get the maximum use possible from it.

2) choker of filthy diamonds or soulcleave pendant

Choker of Filthy Diamonds has more haste and mp5. Soulcleave Pendant has more crit. I definitely prefer the Choker for a holy paladin or possibly a resto shammy and likely a resto druid, since the nerf to Gift of the Earthmother, leaving the crit to priests. Maybe? I’m not sure how crit is for a holy priest these days, but I know crit is still awesome for a disc priest.

However, the Choker is off Rotface and the Pendant is off Saurfang. Really depends how far you’re getting into 10-man ICC, I think.

3) divine plea timer

Okay, I’m assuming you want a timer to tell you when Divine Plea is back up. For this, and any other cooldowns, I use OmniCC. It was my first-ever addon, as I recall. And it’s the one addon I cannot play without.

If you were looking for a timer to tell you how much of the 15 seconds your Divine Plea is still up for and such, I recommend Power Auras Classic to monitor if the buff is active on you or not.

4) hos divine shield holy macro wow

I haven’t actually tested this out, but this ought to work:

/cast Divine Shield
/cast [@target] Hand of Sacrifice
/raid Hand of Sacrifice is up!
/in 10 /raid Hand of Sacrifice is done!

That’s four lines and should work with two button clicks or presses. I highly recommend that your shield come FIRST in the macro, lest you be ruined in the face by whatever insane damage is hitting your target. Also, your @target could be @focus as well or even this:

[@mouseover,help,nodead]

5) paladin group buffs how to

Oof. Okay. The first thing to know here is what buffs other classes give that are equivalent.

Warriors: Battle Shout is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Might. Improved Blessing of Might (2/2) requires the warrior to have 5/5 Commanding Presence to be equivalent. That’s in the third tier of the Fury tree. This is not part of a typical warrior build, as I understand it.

Shamans: Mana Spring Totem is equivalent to unimproved Blessing of Wisdom. Improved Blessing of Wisdom (2/2) requires the shaman to have 3/3 Restorative Totems which is the fourth tier of the Restoration tree. However, it leads to Mana Tide Totem which virtually all restoration shammies take.

This is the general order that I, personally, recommend for pally buffs:

Death Knights (DPS): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Death Knights (tank): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (bear): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might
Druids (kitty): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Druids (moonkin): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Druids (trees): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (survival/marks): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Hunters (BM): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Mages: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (prot): Blessing of Sanctuary, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Might, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (ret): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Paladins (holy): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Priests: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Rogues: Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings
Shaman (enhancement): Blessing of Might, Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Shaman (elemental/resto): Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warlocks: Blessing of Kings, Blessing of Wisdom
Warriors: Blessings of Kings, Blessing of Might

Of course, if you have a warrior in the group, it’s likely more beneficial to have them pop Battle Shout and you do kings than it is for no kings and your might, even if it’s improved. Same deal for wisdom and mana spring.

Alternately, you can buff everyone with Drums of Forgotten Kings and then give physical DPS might and healers and casters wisdom.

6) dk tanking halls of reflection

Note: I am not a death knight, nor am I a great tank. However, if you’re going to do the LOS method on Falric and Marwyn, just drop Death and Decay and hide around the corner. For any casters or the riflemen, Death Grip is great. For the chase scene, D&D is still awesome to use and you’ll want to Death Grip or Strangulate the Witch Doctors to bring them close if they’re a little far out. Blow your cooldowns when you can, saving Army of the Nub Dead for the second spawn of adds at the fourth wall on the chase scene.

7) list of cuts a purple gem can be cut to

Here’s a list of epic, level 80 purple gems. And here’s the list of rare-quality ones.

8) melee dps toravon guide

Hit boss. Don’t touch Frozen Orbs unless there are basically no ranged. Collect loot.

9) shammy tanking gear 3.3

Okay. You can equip a shield. This does not make you a tank. There is no mail gear out there at level 80 that has any kind of defense on it and very little leather, due to the druid changes. You would basically have to stack resilience. The major problem with shaman tanking, apart from the fact that you’re squishy as all get-out, is that a key to tanking is avoidance, like dodging, blocking and parrying. Your parry talent, Spirit Weapons, also reduces threat. Bad combo.

I don’t advise shaman tanking unless you’re doing it for fun with friends OR your tank on Lady Malande on the Illidari Council in Black Temple DROPS and your resident enhancement shaman thinks quickly, throws on a shield, pops Shamanistic Rage causing your raid leader to shout out over vent “ALL HEALS TO DUPER, ALL HEALS TO DUPER!”, which never had been heard before and never would be heard again. Ever. ;)

10) soul shriek aggro reset

Nope, there’s no aggro reset associated with Soul Shriek, as far as I can tell. It IS, however, a silence. Make sure someone is assigned to cleanse this magic effect off your tanks!

Kurn's Q&A #10

Strangely enough, I get a kick out of random search terms that lead here, so here’s the 10th post where I take a look at who’s been searching for stuff and my attempt to better answer the questions these people probably had.

1) paladin divinity jol

Yeah, basically, it doesn’t work the way you think it works. For whatever reason, it works on the judging paladin (and perhaps anyone else who has Divinity) but not on, say, a hunter. I know, weird, eh? Still, here are the results of the experiment I did.

2) “stained shadowcraft tunic” “enhancement shaman”

No, no, go get the Champion’s Deathdealer Breastplate. I know it’s mail, but even before 40, you’ll be able to equip it. It’ll be leather, effectively, ’till you ding 40 and then it’ll become mail. Same deal for your shoulders, get the Prized Beastmaster’s Mantle. Apart from anything else, intellect is a good stat to have — not only will it extend your mana pool, but also if you’re properly specced in the 50s or thereabouts, you’ll be getting Mental Quickness, adding to your attack power from your intellect.

3) anyway to keep focus frame through valithria

Not that I’ve seen. >< I use a macro to focus her:

/focus Valithria Dreamwalker

4) blood prince council+holy priest+bad

Nah, not bad. What we’ll typically do is 1-2 holy paladins, 1 disc priest, 1 resto druid, 1-2 resto shammies and a holy priest. The holy priest does very well in topping people off, saving people from their own idiocy. We have the shammies helping on tanks if we’ve just got the one holy pally, so the priest gets his Circle of Hax on and his Empowered Renew blasting through the raid. Works pretty well.

Of course, if you’re thinking their numbers suck, look at their assignments. Are they assigned to the raid with 3 resto druids? Then yes, they will appear “bad”. But unless you’re losing a bunch of people due to lack of heals (and not their own stupidity), your holy priest is probably doing fine.

5) can you remove mutated plague with divine protection

Okay, first of all, Divine Protection is the paladin equivalent of Shield Wall. So no, Divine Protection is not going to wipe Mutated Plague off the tank.

Mutated Plague is the debuff that Professor Putricide stacks on the tanks in Phase 3 of his encounter. Typically, on 25-man, we have Tank 1 take 2 stacks, then Tank 2 takes 2, then Tank 3 takes 2, then T1 takes 1, T2 takes 1, T3 takes 1, and so on until the good Professor is dead.

What WOULD drop Mutated Plague off is Divine Shield. But you DO NOT want to do this (and I suspect that’s why you asked if DP would wipe it off) because if MP drops off any target for any reason, it’ll heal the boss for a certain amount per stack that was on the tank. That includes tank death, that includes bubbling.

So please do feel free to use Divine Protection in P3 of Professor Putricide. :)

6) cataclysm “level 85″+”experience needed”

Okay, there’s like no information out for Cataclysm yet. I don’t think the Friends and Family Closed Alpha is even out yet. However, considering the level cap is moving up only five levels, I would have to presume that those are going to be some pretty epic levels and that you’ll have to get an obscene amount of experience to get to 85. That doesn’t mean that SOME crazy space goats won’t ding in like, four days, though, RIGHT OSEPHALA? ;)

7) divine illumination cooldown add on

I cannot pimp this enough: OmniCC is the best cooldown timer ever. It displays cooldowns by minute and then, at 60 seconds it displays by second until it’s up. This is one of the addons I cannot live without.

8) divine intervention macro

From my Holy How-To #3:

Here’s my “hey, I cast Divine Intervention on someone” macro. Note that you must be targetting the person you want to DI.

/cast Divine Intervention

/script SendChatMessage(“DI: The generous pally’s version of Bubble/Hearth.”, “WHISPER”, nil, UnitName(“target”));

/6 Divine Intervention cast on %t.

What that does is cast DI, then sends a whisper to your target saying: DI: The generous pally’s version of Bubble/Hearth. This can obviously be changed, that’s just my sense of humour. ;)

Then it announces to the healing channel (#6) that I cast DI on my target.

9) divine shield mystic buffet

Nope. It goes riiiiiiiight through Divine Shield. :(

10) grid show random dungeon tank

Ah, you’re using Grid and you want it to show you the roles of the people in your party, right? To my knowledge, there’s no way to show that in Grid as of yet. Your standard Blizzard UI party frames will show you the roles, though. Or, you can do what I do and that’s click on every possible person in your party who’s a pally, druid, death knight or warrior and pray that the one with the highest health is your tank…

Bonus question: how to tank as a paladin at lvl 20

20 is when it becomes easy. Make sure you have Righteous Fury on (which I believe still goes away after you die, so don’t forget to put it back on!) and judge your single targets. If you have more than 2-3 mobs, drop Consecration. Congratulations. You are now a leet threat machine!

Genuine compliment or not?

So tonight, my brother hit 80 on his hunter. We did a random heroic (Old Kingdom — which spawned the previous post to the “tanks” of the Bloodlust Battlegroup) and we did regular TOC and I tanked heroic Utgarde Keep…

And then he needed 7 more badges to get the Mirror of Truth. So we queued up again; me as a tank/healer, him as a DPS, obviously.

We got The Nexus and I breathed a sigh of relief, although I was tanking. I know the instance, I know the boss fights, I know how trash works. I had about 29k health, fully buffed (mark, kings, no fort) and off we went.

I swear to God, I thought the DPS warrior was actively taunting off of me. Until I checked his gearscore. 5300 or thereabouts. Mine, as comparison, is about 2800. Still, I was doing okay on single targets. The issue would arise when the warrior’s whirlwind would simply out-threat my swipe.

So we’ve done the mini boss, the caster boss and Anomolous and we’re at trash towards the rock boss, when the warrior says, apropos of nothing:

“UR A DAMN GOOD TANK 4 GS OF 2.8K”

The holy paladin said:

“lol i agree” “amazing”

I didn’t say anything. Were they being sincere? Or were they being sarcastic dicks? You never know with these people.

So at the end of the run, I say:

“Thanks very much for the group, everyone. Apologies for not holding aggro too well on multiple mobs. :)”

The pally comes back with:

“ur amazing”

And the DK said “psh did great”

The warrior had already left the group by the time the pally had said anything.

So I don’t know. Maybe the warrior was being a sarcastic ass, but it seems like the pally thought I did great for my gear and the DK seemed to not mind too much.

If any of them were at all sincere, I really hope that what they take away from the run is not that I am awesome, but rather, GearScore does not make a player. GearScore shows a player’s potential maximum output and nothing else. Like, nothing I could possibly do could help my Swipe out-threat the warrior. At all. But that’s a gear issue. As it was, I was relatively good with single target threat and I didn’t let things beat on the pally and I was super-quick to growl at things or even use Challenging Roar. I like to think that I pushed at the limits of my gear.

I think it really helped that I’ve tanked the instance on regular and tanked it on both regular and heroic on my pally. Damn me if I didn’t miss Righteous Defense something fierce, though. :P

Attention "tanks" of the Bloodlust Battlegroup

To all warriors, death knights and paladins of the Bloodlust battlegroup… please, do not opt to “tank” in a random heroic if you do not have at least 535 defense rating.

To all druids of the Bloodlust battlegroup… please, do not opt to “tank” in a random heroic if you do not have 3/3 Survival of the Fittest.

I know that I’m not a particularly strong healer on my druid. I just dinged 80. I’m not trying to do Halls of Reflection or anything. But I do know that I can bloody well keep up tanks on trash in heroic Old Kingdom. Tanks who ARE immune to critical strikes by mobs.

So if you don’t have 535 defense, or Survival of the Fittest, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY RANDOM GROUPS, dumbasses.

Quick Q&A response!

Okay, this search term that led someone to my site CANNOT WAIT until Monday’s regular Q&A post.

“do i need defense to tank regular dungeons”

Yes. Let me say that again. Yes.

Granted, you’re not going to have much defense gear to tank Deadmines, but if you’re talking about regular dungeons from 70-80, or even 60-70, defense does matter.

Here’s the deal. If you want to tank, figure out what level the end boss is in the instance through WoWhead. Say you’re 74 and you want to tank regular Violet Hold. Well, Cyanigosa is level 77. You never want to tank mobs 4 or more levels above you, due to crushing blows becoming a possibility, but 3 levels is about average. So you can do VH at 74.

But what defense do you need? The number you are looking for, when you hover your mouse over your defense rating is the chance to not be hit/critically hit by 5.6% for a boss 3 levels higher than you, 5.4% for a boss 2 levels higher than you, 5.2% for a boss 1 level higher than you and 5.0% for a boss of your own level. This is because bosses (all mobs, really) have a base 5% chance to crit and this number increases by .2% for every level the creature has above you.

If you don’t have the required numbers mentioned above, try real hard not to go to an instance with mobs that are higher level than you.

The numbers at 80 are:

535 defense to be NOT critted by a boss 2 levels higher than you (heroics) and 540 defense to be NOT critted by a boss 3 levels higher than you (raid bosses).

If, of course, you are a druid with 3/3 Survival of the Fittest, you cannot be crit unless the mob is something like 5 levels above you, so you do not require any additional defense. You CAN, however, be crushed by mobs 4 or more levels above you, so stick to 3 or fewer levels of difference between you and the mobs you’re tanking.

It’s part of why I actually enjoy tanking on my druid. I know that as long as I go to a level-appropriate instance, I can’t get crit. :)

Druid and Priest levelling

I spent a little while running a few random dungeons on my now-level-72 Disc priest over on Eldre’Thalas on Friday and ran a couple randoms on my level 73 resto/feral tank druid today, with my brother on his level 72 hunter.

Some observations:

1) Priests are excessively squishy. Like, ow.

2) Also on the priest, I ran with a tank who refused to allow the hunter with us to tame a wolf in Utgarde Keep. That’s the bad news, that he (or she) didn’t read party chat AT ALL. Or if they did, they didn’t understand English. The good news is that every single time the hunter pulled the wolf he wanted off the tank, the tank would Death Grip it riiiiight back. So… good tank. Except that they didn’t read party chat.

3) Mass dispell is pretty freaking phenomenal. Properly specced (with 2/2 Focused Power) that’s a .5 second cast. Awesome. And the area of effect on it is HUGE.

4) I’ve only cast Greater Heal a couple of times. PW:S + Flash Heal + Flash Heal, with a Renew already there… Honestly, it works well. I’ve used Power Infusion on myself a couple times for a hasted Prayer of Healing and I always forget about Prayer of Mending for the first few pulls, but I think I’m starting to adjust to disc healing.

5) I was strongly expecting to tank on my druid on Saturday afternoon with my brother tagging along as DPS on his hunter, but apparently, healers were in demand today. So we got Nexus. With a tank so dumb that… that I lack a witty punchline that would properly convey his stupidity to you. I’m okay with doing things slightly different here and there, but when you go RIGHT down the Nexus hallway from the start and then clear to the entrance of Anomolous’ wing and keep going for HIM, INSTEAD of going to Ormorok, then I’m going to question your sanity.

The other hunter in the group died at some point. I can’t remember why I didn’t rez him. I think he may have released and zoned back in while we were still in combat. But because of the direction we’d gone and the seriously SCREWED UP path we took through trash, he died twice more while coming to us.

I actually feel badly about this, but I vote kicked him for not staying put and letting us come to him. We got a mage who promptly got himself killed by going left and not seeing the trash. Then he died again while trying to invis through trash to us. What on EARTH is so complicated about “Stay there. We’re coming to you. Don’t move.”??

We eventually wound up killing all the bosses, but the run took close to 45 minutes.

6) My brother dinged 72 while in The Nexus and I was four bars from 74, so we requeued and got Azjol-Nerub. With me healing. Again. Considering how rarely I get to heal on any toon who can tank, I was confused.

So we blow through AN, which is my brother’s first time there. I’m seriously getting used to druid healing. The way I’ve got my Clique setup means that it’s almost like playing the piano. Ctrl-click that, alt-click that, shift-click that. I don’t even know the binds by heart, but it flows really naturally when I’m playing. And I love that I rarely have to use Regrowth or Healing Touch, although I did use Tranquility once in each instance today.

7) Standing in Hadronox’s poison is bad, just FYI. If you are glowing green, you are standing in poison that is going to kill you. Sorry.

8) Okay. Tanks, listen up. How to avoid Anub’arak’s POUND ability and, as a special bonus, Ingvar’s DARK SMASH/SMASH abilities:

Three words: Run through him. Neither one changes direction once the cast is coming. Watch the cast bar. If you see DARK SMASH or SMASH for Ingvar or POUND for Anub’arak, run directly through the boss until you are on his other side.

You may then want to turn around so they don’t beat you from behind when they’re done casting.

We’ll all miss one here or there, but knowing how to deal with these abilities is seriously important in both regular and heroic versions of Utgarde Keep and Azjol-Nerub.

My druid is still 73, 2 bars from 74 and yet I have this overwhelming urge to throw bubbles at people…

Dear DPS…

Dear DPS,

I know we’re in levelling content and that you’re anxious to get your bonus XP from the random dungeon and move on to another one. I get that.

I further recognize that, as it’s levelling content, people’s gear basically sucks and so DPS can be low.

But these two facts do not combine well. If you want to get out of the dungeon faster, please do not pull. Let your tank pull. Please do not CC mobs when your tank is trying to move them or execute a line of sight pull. Please do not stun mobs randomly for extra DPS (ret pallies, I’m talking to YOU about Holy Wrath) because it’s really freaking annoying. (Similarly, anyone with a knockback, if you use it, I will kill you.)

The fact that I have to go around chasing things that didn’t follow me because you CCed it or stunned it does not make for a faster run. The fact that I have to blow Challenging Roar because you ran into a group of mobs and dropped Consecrate ALSO does not make for a faster run.

To continue, Mana Spring Totem is secondary in terms of priorities when your healer is a priest and your ret pally doesn’t know where his Cleanse button is. Drop Cleansing Totem, please, shammies. Pallies, LEARN TO CLEANSE. Every paladin who doesn’t cleanse magic, disease or poisons when their healer is unable to cleanse one of those and there’s no totem, is IMHO, a FAIL. And you make me embarassed to raid as a paladin.

But perhaps you’re just unaware as to who can cleanse what. SO LET’S CLEAR THAT UP, SHALL WE?

1) Paladins can dispell: Diseases, Magic Effects and Poisons with one button – CLEANSE.

2) Druids can dispell: Curses and Poisons with three buttons – Remove Poison, Abolish Poison, Remove Curse.

3) Priests can dispell: Magic Effects (both offensively and defensively) and Diseases with three buttons – Dispell Magic, Mass Dispell and Abolish Disease.

4) Shaman can dispell: Curses, Poisons and Diseases (and can purge Magic offensively using Purge) with 1 button – Cleanse Spirit. Plus the Cleansing Totem removes Poisons and Diseases on a pulse. (Note that all shaman have Cleansing Totem and all shaman can remove poisons and diseases, but only resto shammies can remove curses.)

Do the math. If I’m a paladin tank with a priest healer and 3 non-cleansing DPS classes and I get poisoned, I WILL CLEANSE MYSELF. Get Decursive. Learn to cleanse when needed, people.

Please do not boast to me about your DPS numbers. I do not care. As long as the boss dies or the mobs die, and I can get the hell out of your group, that’s all that matters.

Having said that, the next time I have to tank Jedoga Shadowseeker and my DPS fails to kill the volunteer not once but TWICE, thereby buffing her damage 200%, I will be very, very cranky. Let’s just say I’m happy that I have Barkskin.

First volunteer: Barkskin, Survival Instincts.

Second volunteer: Enrage, Frenzied Regeneration, Lifeblood (go go herbalism) and Barkskin when it came back up.

And to the ridiculously mouthy, braggy ret paladin from my Old Kingdom group, who, it must be said, buffed us with Greater Blessing of Kings… I am SO glad I put your dumb self on ignore. If you want to tank, GO AHEAD AND FREAKING TANK. Do NOT just attack at will. Also, Divine Storm at the START of your rotation, before some of the mobs have even become aware that I, the tank, exist? BAD CALL, BUDDY. Finally, learn to use Every Man For Himself and your bubble to get out of fears before you pull another Faceless One, kk?

No love,

Your Tank

This post brought to you in part by frustration, annoyance and by the fact that I just tanked Old Kingdom on my druid for the very first time.

Random Dungeon Tank Failure

I had two bad tanking experiences today while running my typical four random dungeons on my four 80s. And no, one of them was not while I was tanking, thank you very much. ;)

The first one was while I was on my hunter. Apart from the appallingly open racist comments from the group at large (three were from one guild and all of them were being racist and otherwise emitting perjoratives), the tank couldn’t hold aggro worth a damn. I mean, I really wonder if the dude was in Defensive Stance. Every class apart from warriors allows you to plainly see if the tank in question has their threat ability on — Frost Presence, Righteous Fury, bear form — but not warriors. Anyways, even after misdirecting mobs to him AND assisting him for DPS targets, I still ended up climbing the aggro list extremely quickly.

Of course, we blew through heroic UK without any real issues, so that’s not a huge failure. Clearly a mediocre tank, though, and I put him and his guildies on ignore so I wouldn’t get stuck with them on this toon again.

Moral of the story: l2threat.

The second tank failure was actually a very good tank, in that he used cooldowns and held aggro. Except that he was a total failure at keeping an eye out for me, his healer (on my shammy). He was basically running off through heroic Forge of Souls without me, not paying attention to either my mana pool (which only dipped low once, but not even a PAUSE before running into the first boss encounter). At one point, I stopped to drink and he ran off and some mob has AOE damage so one of the rogues died before I got there. So I healed, the mobs died, I tried to rez the rogue.

Tank runs off into a room and it takes me forever to get there and I blow my cooldowns. “You realize I was out of range because I was rezzing the rogue, right?”

Rogue who died: “I ran back it’s okay.”

Tank: “y did the rogue die in 1st place?”

Me: “Because you ran off without waiting for me to drink.”

No response, obviously.

Then on the first boss, they didn’t kill the corrupt soul thingy. Which, okay, no big deal. They all needed on the bag he dropped, so I did, too, although I typically greed on that stuff.

Thus far, just another dumbass tank who doesn’t care about anything, right? Nothing to worry about too much if I keep up with him. Well, on the last boss, when they practically killed the tank through the mirror effect thing, I got concerned. I was already hating the tank and the group, but clearly, they didn’t understand the mechanics of this fight if the tank was almost killed by the mirror.

The rogue who’d already died on trash died on the last boss because of the mirror, a little later on.

And so did I, when I got the mirror afterwards.

I think my PRECISE words were:

“Wow, l2 stop dps.”

Not another word after that. I didn’t pop my reincarnation until after the boss died, then started rezzing the rogue.

Whereas I would normally greed on the Frozen Orb, I needed, after they all did. And I hit disenchant for something (and won the shard). And lo and behold, the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion dropped. One of the rogues had it already and automatically passed, but the three others, INCLUDING THE PALADIN TANK, hit Need.

“Well, screw that,” I said to myself, and hit Need. I have an enhancement set and spec and this entire group, all belonging to the same guild, had made the run extremely unpleasant for me.

So when I won it, I grinned to myself and left the group. Turns out I also got the orb, meaning I won everything off that boss. Why can’t my paladin have my shammy’s rolls?

Anyways, I promptly scrolled up in my chat log and put the idiot tank on ignore so as to never group with him again.

Moral of the story: Tanks should keep an eye on their healer’s mana AND their physical proximity to them.

I honestly wonder what the hell I posted about before the random dungeon/LFG feature came out…

How I Got 19 Emblems of Triumph in One Night

Due to the fact that I’ve been tanking so much lately, I’ve been working on my prot gear. Up ’till now, I’ve been using my Conqueror’s Aegis Breastplate. I’ve managed to upgrade my neck, my bracers and my legs for free out of Trial of the Crusader (25m regular) because ilvl 245 loot no longer costs us DKP and we’ve cleared it so often that most people don’t want any more tank gear. (WTB Satrina’s Impeding Scarab, but that’s a whole other story.)

So tonight, we do heroic Faction Champs and heroic Twins and I manage to win the roll on the Trophy of the Crusade off one of them. I was all excited that I’d finally get to upgrade my chestpiece (which is out of Ulduar… ugh.) to another ilvl 245 piece.

And then I realized I only had 56 Emblems of Triumph vs. the 75 I needed to turn in with my trophy for Turalyon’s Breastplate of Triumph. Since we finished the raid early, I decided I’d go for it. 19 badges isn’t that hard to get, not these days. Each random heroic you do (after the first, which I’d already done) gives you two extra badges. So if the average dungeon had 3 bosses, I’d only need to do 4 or so to ensure I’d get all 19 that I needed.

To try to make sure it was a relatively easy night, I decided not to queue as a tank. I just wanted to heal, get my chestpiece and go to bed.

First up, Utgarde Pinnacle. Great run. Fail of a hunter, though, name of Glyhm. Let us not only be in awe of his fail gear that is poorly gemmed and usually not enchanted, which includes Icy Scale Chestguard (!), nor should we only be in awe of his slightly strange spec and choice of professions (and the fact that one is nowhere near max level), but we should just sort of sit there in disbelief at this little exchange:

huntard1

I probably should have gone to bed after this run, because it was definitely an indication of how things were going to go. No one said anything in party chat after that, that’s how agog we all were.

Anyways, after that… no, wait, I’m sorry. I have to address the huntard.

Aspect of the Viper definitely drops your DPS low. It’s a short-term thing you use for about 20-25 seconds at a time to fill up your mana bar when it’s low. To allow you to regen mana without dropping your DPS would make you OP. Mages have Evocation, which reduces their DPS to 0 while they channel it. Warlocks lifetap, during which they only inflict damage on themselves, not the target. And rogues don’t have mana, so there you go, the 3 mana-using pure DPS classes all have ways of regaining mana that affects their DPS.

Funny how balanced that is, isn’t it? :P

Anyways, despite the fail hunter (who makes me glad I don’t run recount on Madrana, because I think I would have cried if I’d looked at the DPS meters), we finished Utgarde Pinnacle in 22 minutes. Six badges down, 13 to go, right?

On to Forge of Souls! I basically don’t have any issues with this group. It was probably the best group of the night and I’d essentially forgotten about it entirely because nothing bad happened. Another 4 badges down, 9 to go.

And then it was time for Ahn Kahet: The Old Kingdom.

Problem #1: The mage was a cheap bastard. No table, no Arcane Brilliance (just Arcane Intellect). Given that most runs go less than a half hour and are usually quick, I can forgive them this. But it still annoyed me.

Problem #2: The mage either had no idea how to decurse or had no idea where their decurse button was. They claimed to be on someone else’s computer, so maybe the latter is the reason that I NEVER GOT CURSE OF TONGUES REMOVED FROM ME, which led to my death and the death of the warlock shortly after the second boss.

Problem #3: The warlock never bothered to soulstone me (or anyone) or put down a soulwell.

Problem #4: It appeared that the rogue had never before done the instance. Which… is fine. Honestly, I’m okay with that. The problem I have is when people don’t ask. Never been to OK before? Fine. Tell me. Then I can tell you how not to die when the last dude casts insanity, so that you’re not going “omg wtf how come u were all mced?!?!”

Despite a near-wipe on the last guy (who bugged out and reset, so we got a second chance — and the rogue died AGAIN), we got through the instance. We didn’t do the heroic-only boss, so only 4 bosses and 2 extra emblems. Six emblems down, two more to go!

Whew.

So I queue up again, as a healer.

And then I see the Halls of Reflection loading screen. I sigh, wondering if I should just drop group and go to bed, but… I’m just two. freaking. emblems. from my shiny new chest. So I cross my fingers and brace myself for doing the dumbass LoS strat (I find that as the tank, you have much more pull in the decision-making process than as a healer. :P) and probably wiping a few times.

I zone in and I look around for the tank. Warrior has 27k health. Okay, not him. There’s a hunter, so that’s not the tank. A mage, nope, not the tank. The DK has 29k health. And I know I didn’t queue up as a tank. So yeah, the DK is going to try to tank Heroic HoR with 29k health — which includes kings.

We gave it two tries and then basically asked him to leave. Which he did. And he’d been unsure in the beginning anyways. I told him to keep tanking and working on his gear and thanks for trying, hoping against hope that good karma would bring me a good tank.

After a few minutes of waiting for a new tank in the queue, I was like, well, fuck. I can tank it if I need to.

So I take us out of the queue, sign up as tank and healer, then requeue.

30 seconds later, we have a priest healer. Sweet, let’s do eeeeet.

So I tank in the middle, tell them to run to me if they have aggro, if we can get the hunter to freeze something and, if the priest has a second, to shack something, that would be amazing, but not to worry if not.

We coast through the first waves. It was beautiful. I was totally in the tanking zone, I was holding aggro, things were shackled and trapped, it was AWESOME! We kill the first boss and get all the way up to the second to last wave and then it falls apart. We lose the hunter.

That’s okay, one more wave.

We lose the mage.

That’s okay, we have what, two mobs up and the boss is coming, but we can TOTALLY do this. I have 43k health and a ton of cooldowns!

The warrior dies as the Spectral Footman who came into the boss fight with us dies. That leaves the Tortured Rifleman. I get the priest to shackle and we embark upon a long, arduous fight that ends up with her death and my continuing to wear the boss down for another 80 seconds or so. I was judging light, I was using my sacred shield, Divine Plea was active and at about 12k health, I used Lay on Hands. Still going! From 43k all the way down to about 6k, whereupon Ardent Defender finally freaking procs. And then once that was done, I still had a healthstone (leftover from my raid, not from the fail warlock who was in OK with me), so I used that… and then I died.

Way impressive, no? I figured we’d be just fine. But no, the priest drops group. SIGH.

So we go for another healer, and a druid shows up. The druid immediately starts asking why we’re not doing the LOS strat. >< And then, despite not having aggro (hi, I have Grid, don’t you lie to me, you leafy bastard), proceeds not to heal me as much as he probably should have been healing me, doesn’t remove even ONE poison and then I die and we wipe.

We run back. Again. And now the mage has decided she’s had enough. So we get a warlock. Who, of course, doesn’t SS the healer or provide a soulwell.

Once again, the idiot druid fails. I’m sorry, when I’ve taunted off of you and you no longer have aggro on any of the mobs AND I’ve BOPped you just to make absolutely certain half the mobs who are up aren’t going to touch you, you cannot blame your death FROM THE POISONS THE ROGUE STACKED ON YOU, on me. Sorry. Especially when you can cleanse poison off yourself. Seriously.

So the druid does just that, blames me for his death, then says this strat doesn’t work, and leaves the group.

So I left, too. I got up, got ready for bed, then sat back down and queued myself up just as a healer for another random heroic, because really, I was just one emblem short of my damn chest.

And there’s the bloody Halls of Reflection loading screen again. I could have screamed.

The group looks more competant than the others. There’s a DK, a ret pally, a warlock and a warrior tank who has 39k with kings. Cool.

LoS strat? Sigh, yes, LoS strat.

Two wipes, due to the LoS strat, since the tank (and others) kept creeping around the corner out of MY line of sight, but anyways. We finally got Falric down and wiped on the waves after him. I could have left. I had my stupid badge. But the four of them were all from a guild on Caelestrasz and seemed at least somewhat competant, so I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

After another wipe on the trash pre-Marwyn, I said that this was my last attempt and that we should make it a good one. The warlock has no shards, so no SS, no HS. /facepalm.

We start in on the trash and even though I have to use Holy Wrath on cooldown to stun things and use Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice to keep us alive, we made it through to the boss. The warlock even ninja soulstoned me as soon as he had the shards, in the middle of waves. Of course, he then took 4 ticks from every Well of Corruption that spawned on him, but he lived and we lived, and hey, let’s go escape the Lich King!

We wiped on the second-to-last wall because they were killing things randomly and there was still a witch doctor up that the Lich King caught up to and they couldn’t kill before he was on us, because he was a caster. ><

So I advise them to focus the witch doctors and to pop cooldowns on the second wave of the last wall. We escape the third wall easily and are nearly overrun at the last wall, but we all pop cooldowns and escaped. True, we lost the warlock, but he pulled aggro on an abom who cleaved him, so there wasn’t a lot we could do.

Whew.

So all that said and done, I went and got my chestpiece, got +10 stats to it, put in a Solid Dragon’s Eye for 51 stam and a Regal Dreadstone for 10 dodge/15 stam (and to activate my meta). With an elixir of mighty fortitude, a guru’s elixir and a 40 stam food buff and Blessing of Sanctuary, I now hit 40k health, self-buffed.

I was also told, by various groups, that I was an excellent healer (the OK group and the last HoR group, in particular) and that I was a great tank (the HoR group that saw me solo Marwyn for over a minute).  I don’t really believe the great tank business, since I think pally tanks are very overpowered at the moment and it’s all about knowing when to hit your cooldowns, but it’s nice to hear praise about my healing. I take pride in healing and really do consider it my main job in this game. If I wasn’t at least somewhat good at it, I don’t think I’d be doing it at all. Hell, if I weren’t good at healing, I might still be DPSing. Which I’m no longer as good at as I used to be — which is one reason I keep healing.

Anyways, I’m certainly not going to be tanking a lot more than heroics for the foreseeable future, but I think I’m going to keep tanking a bunch of those (at least one a day) to help me get accustomed to it. I still don’t love it or anything, but I do enjoy learning about various aspects of the game and pally tanking is so easy compared to what I imagine warrior or DK tanking is, that I’m just going to enjoy this brief period of time where I’m not loathing tanking.

It’s so hard to imagine that, once upon a time, back in Apotheosis, I OTed Hydross’ adds and Tidewalker’s murlocs… Thank God we got a real OT for those fights after just a week or so of my standing in for them. :P