Tank like a girl

Yesterday we continued trying our luck in ZA, and it went quite nicely (from a very super-casual raiding standpoint). On our third try we got Halazzi down, and there was much cheering. I am so proud of my girls. For a bunch of girls who only raid every other weekend we’re pretty good, if you ask me.

Our problem in previous attempts had been that DPS went down very quickly in phase 2, due to range problems. Once we made all DPS hang out in the back where the lynx was tanked as well, maximum zappage from the totems was avoided, the healers rejoiced, and Halazzi went down. My tanking must have been a bit sloppy as I ate 8 crushes, but other than that, I was pretty happy with my avoidance on this fight.

We then moved on to Jan’alai, tried him over and over again, and got him to like…75% in our best attempt? Something like that. Our raid composition is not ideal for Jan’alai as we currently have no paladin tank. Tank-wise our tanking corps for raids is four protection warriors and one feral druid, and only two tanks are ZA-ready, protection warriors. Our lone raiding paladin is holy-spec, an amazing healer with a decent tank set, but we really need her heals. We did try to have her put her tank set on and tank the dragonhawks, but then there was not enough raid healing. I think next time we might consider it again, but swap me out for my druid so I can provide healing instead of lame DPS. It just sucks that we’ll have to stack the raid differently for one specific boss, but that’s the world of raiding, I guess.

The biggest problem I had while tanking the dragonhawks was that I was completely unable to see the fire bombs. When you have the huge blob of angry dragonhawks on you, it’s really hard to see the ground. Tricky. Anyone here a prot warrior who has successfully tanked the dragonhawks? I used Stormchops and Darkmoon Card: Vengeance but I am not sure it made a difference. I certainly was completely unable to hold the dragonhawks against AoE damage, despite tab-Devastating like crazy.

In other news, I managed to complete part one of my rogue’s honor grind for Merciless Gladiator’s Slicer. The next project is to get the honor for Merciless Gladiator’s Quickblade. It’s half the honor of the main hand, so it shouldn’t take me too long. I respec’d to a Shadowstep build, which is ridiculous amounts of fun, both for farming and PvP (if you can call the later fun). I am excited about the prospect of taking her to Karazhan very soon.

In yet more news, my guild lost our two best-geared mages in one fell swoop. The first one transferred off, the second one decided to switch her focus to her newly 70 resto shaman on another server, to raid there. I am disappointed, especially about the departure of the latter mage, as I was very fond of her, and she was the most-skilled frost mage I ever had the pleasure of playing with.

We could use more druid mains, more mage mains. We haven’t got a single raiding druid main, they’re all alts of raiders whose mains we need. We have one mage who will start raiding soon, and that’s it so far. Strangely enough, our alliance sister-guild (they’re 5/6 in ZA) has tons of druid mains, also a lot more mages than we have.